New fiction.
Apr. 9th, 2009 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matt_doyleSomeone expressed a wish for some more fiction, and I happen to have some lying around - not new, exactly, but an unposted continuation of a fragmentary... thing. Here are all three parts of it so far, in chronological order. It's a (I think) secondary-world fantasy with an emphasis on romance and atypical post-apocalyptic mythology. Possibly a novel, but if so, not one I expect to be working on any time soon. The main characters are Neminth, an apprentice scrivener in one of the world's last libraries, and Shisya, a dedicant of an order of warriors who preserve the old laws of their fallen kingdom despite the ruin, anarchy, and hopelessness of the world around them.
Neminth stared at the girl over the broken marble balustrade, hanging back from the balcony’s edge so that he would draw no extra attention. The prefect of the Atheneum, who claimed that silence was worth its weight in paper, had actually raised his voice to argue with her.
“You defile your charge!” the old man said to her retreating shape, the vitriol in his voice as sharp as any spear. “If you would uphold the Kingdom, you cannot abandon us to the Alogoi! We are the living memory of the Kingdom- her languages, her philosophies, the very breath of her written on every page, preserved and revered from incunabulum to extribulum! The breath is the soul, and there is no-one but us who knows it!”
She turned back to face him with a slow, cool contempt, and Neminth leaned forward to catch a glimpse of her face. He was meant to be cataloguing the lost painters, but from his first sight of her, he’d done nothing but try to find a word to describe the color of her hair. It was the orange-gold of saffron, of amber, or apricots, or the very edge of clouds at sunrise- colors he didn’t know the hex numbers for, and that poets only hinted at.
“Words,” she said to the prefect. “All you have here is words. The Kingdom was built of the great cities, and bound by roads, and upheld by the shields of her soldiers. And whether you write them down or not, people will remember her, and and tell stories of her, and find the right words. You don’t have a monopoly on speech, Prefect. I’m not ignorant. But the barbarians are an infection everywhere, and the ronin are few. I would save you if I could, but there are forges to defend, and farms, and their sinew and sweat do more for the Kingdom than you, who only record it. It’s triage.”
Neminth stepped forward again, faster than he could think, and almost froze when she turned to stare at him, one hand dropping to the cudgel hanging at her waist.
“You’re wrong,” he said, and his voice echoed across the domed room, carrying better than the broken, reedy Prefect’s voice had. “If the forges and the farms are destroyed, and the smiths and the farmers were all killed, we could teach the people how to build them again, how to work metal and how to harvest. But who would build the libraries again? One forge is like another, but every book we have is unique. Besides- how can you uphold the Kingdom’s laws, if the laws are lost? Only we have those.”
-----
His fingertips touched hers, and he felt a hot flash of shame- her fingers, like his, were long, elegant but for the bitten-off nails, but she had hard ridges of callus that made his fingers feel soft and fat by comparison. Making eye contact felt much the same- he could feel the nervous twitch trying to make him look down or away before she realized he was staring- and the sharpness of her gaze, the critical slant of her frown, that said maybe she knew already, reading every thought off his wide-eyed face, and she did not approve.
“I need your help,” she said, her voice sounding as soft and awkward as his fingers felt. She bit her lip, waiting while he suppressed a helpless laugh. His eyes lingered on her mouth for a moment, and he wondered absurdly if the words had a taste- something new and strange to this hard, narrow girl.
“You can count on me,” he said, exhaling hard to force the words out, and maybe make them sound convincing rather than flat and wavering. “Just get me into the library and keep me safe- if any part of the lexicon was copied or saved, I can find it in the index, and translate it or copy it fairhand, as you like.”
He didn’t say I’d do anything for you, and he hoped she didn’t hear him not saying it.
“One scrivener to win a war and save a kingdom,” she said, not really to him, though her eyes were still fixed on his. “One pen against every unsworn sword and every secret traitor. It’s such a fragile damn thing to rest it all on.”
“It could be worse,” he said, knowing she wouldn’t understand him even before he said it. “I could be a horseshoe nail.”
-----
The Bassarids cared little for trade, and less for metalworking, but a great deal about vanity -- ao Neminth's room had a mirror, but it was only a smooth, polished sheet of bronze. He smiled into it, feeling too introspective, more than a little lost in the clamor of his own thoughts.
At the moment, he should do his best to forget that he was a scrivener, and pretend he belonged here. He stared more closely at the face in the mirror. His hair had exploded into a mess of brown curls, all of them fighting to escape the neat tonsure he'd kept them in since he'd begun his studies at the Atheneum. His cheekbones, always high and sharp, had been called into relief as he'd thinned, hunger-hollows visible beneath them, but not as exaggerated as he had feared. The mirror would have been too dark and wavery to show the dirt of the road against the olive tan of his skin, but he could feel that it was gone. The Bassarids, it was said, did not bathe, and strictly speaking that was true. They did, however, keep steamhouses. He'd sat in one until he felt well-roasted, then awkwardly doused himself in scented oil and scarped his skin clean with the copper paddle they provided. Every inch of his skin still stung, half a glass later, but he took some satisfaction in it -- it meant that, for the first time in weeks, he was clean, even if he did smell like an exotic flower garden.
The clothes bothered him a little more. A simple red linen wrap-skirt hung down to his calves -- the longest and most modest they had; tied securely at stomach and hips with bright-colored sashes of quilted clith. A maroon half-cloak mantled around his shoulder, fastened with fine chains of looped copper wire, leaving his chest, stomach, and lower back bare. He'd declined all their offers of turbans, hats, and hair-coverings -- but they'd been both amused and appalled when he'd asked for a shears to trim his hair back shorter; and again after he'd tried to explain the idea of shoes to them.
He felt very, very exposed.
-----
I recognize that cuts off rather unsatisfactorily, but well, tough. I'm unsatisfied too, and would very dearly like to know what happens next.
Neminth stared at the girl over the broken marble balustrade, hanging back from the balcony’s edge so that he would draw no extra attention. The prefect of the Atheneum, who claimed that silence was worth its weight in paper, had actually raised his voice to argue with her.
“You defile your charge!” the old man said to her retreating shape, the vitriol in his voice as sharp as any spear. “If you would uphold the Kingdom, you cannot abandon us to the Alogoi! We are the living memory of the Kingdom- her languages, her philosophies, the very breath of her written on every page, preserved and revered from incunabulum to extribulum! The breath is the soul, and there is no-one but us who knows it!”
She turned back to face him with a slow, cool contempt, and Neminth leaned forward to catch a glimpse of her face. He was meant to be cataloguing the lost painters, but from his first sight of her, he’d done nothing but try to find a word to describe the color of her hair. It was the orange-gold of saffron, of amber, or apricots, or the very edge of clouds at sunrise- colors he didn’t know the hex numbers for, and that poets only hinted at.
“Words,” she said to the prefect. “All you have here is words. The Kingdom was built of the great cities, and bound by roads, and upheld by the shields of her soldiers. And whether you write them down or not, people will remember her, and and tell stories of her, and find the right words. You don’t have a monopoly on speech, Prefect. I’m not ignorant. But the barbarians are an infection everywhere, and the ronin are few. I would save you if I could, but there are forges to defend, and farms, and their sinew and sweat do more for the Kingdom than you, who only record it. It’s triage.”
Neminth stepped forward again, faster than he could think, and almost froze when she turned to stare at him, one hand dropping to the cudgel hanging at her waist.
“You’re wrong,” he said, and his voice echoed across the domed room, carrying better than the broken, reedy Prefect’s voice had. “If the forges and the farms are destroyed, and the smiths and the farmers were all killed, we could teach the people how to build them again, how to work metal and how to harvest. But who would build the libraries again? One forge is like another, but every book we have is unique. Besides- how can you uphold the Kingdom’s laws, if the laws are lost? Only we have those.”
-----
His fingertips touched hers, and he felt a hot flash of shame- her fingers, like his, were long, elegant but for the bitten-off nails, but she had hard ridges of callus that made his fingers feel soft and fat by comparison. Making eye contact felt much the same- he could feel the nervous twitch trying to make him look down or away before she realized he was staring- and the sharpness of her gaze, the critical slant of her frown, that said maybe she knew already, reading every thought off his wide-eyed face, and she did not approve.
“I need your help,” she said, her voice sounding as soft and awkward as his fingers felt. She bit her lip, waiting while he suppressed a helpless laugh. His eyes lingered on her mouth for a moment, and he wondered absurdly if the words had a taste- something new and strange to this hard, narrow girl.
“You can count on me,” he said, exhaling hard to force the words out, and maybe make them sound convincing rather than flat and wavering. “Just get me into the library and keep me safe- if any part of the lexicon was copied or saved, I can find it in the index, and translate it or copy it fairhand, as you like.”
He didn’t say I’d do anything for you, and he hoped she didn’t hear him not saying it.
“One scrivener to win a war and save a kingdom,” she said, not really to him, though her eyes were still fixed on his. “One pen against every unsworn sword and every secret traitor. It’s such a fragile damn thing to rest it all on.”
“It could be worse,” he said, knowing she wouldn’t understand him even before he said it. “I could be a horseshoe nail.”
-----
The Bassarids cared little for trade, and less for metalworking, but a great deal about vanity -- ao Neminth's room had a mirror, but it was only a smooth, polished sheet of bronze. He smiled into it, feeling too introspective, more than a little lost in the clamor of his own thoughts.
At the moment, he should do his best to forget that he was a scrivener, and pretend he belonged here. He stared more closely at the face in the mirror. His hair had exploded into a mess of brown curls, all of them fighting to escape the neat tonsure he'd kept them in since he'd begun his studies at the Atheneum. His cheekbones, always high and sharp, had been called into relief as he'd thinned, hunger-hollows visible beneath them, but not as exaggerated as he had feared. The mirror would have been too dark and wavery to show the dirt of the road against the olive tan of his skin, but he could feel that it was gone. The Bassarids, it was said, did not bathe, and strictly speaking that was true. They did, however, keep steamhouses. He'd sat in one until he felt well-roasted, then awkwardly doused himself in scented oil and scarped his skin clean with the copper paddle they provided. Every inch of his skin still stung, half a glass later, but he took some satisfaction in it -- it meant that, for the first time in weeks, he was clean, even if he did smell like an exotic flower garden.
The clothes bothered him a little more. A simple red linen wrap-skirt hung down to his calves -- the longest and most modest they had; tied securely at stomach and hips with bright-colored sashes of quilted clith. A maroon half-cloak mantled around his shoulder, fastened with fine chains of looped copper wire, leaving his chest, stomach, and lower back bare. He'd declined all their offers of turbans, hats, and hair-coverings -- but they'd been both amused and appalled when he'd asked for a shears to trim his hair back shorter; and again after he'd tried to explain the idea of shoes to them.
He felt very, very exposed.
-----
I recognize that cuts off rather unsatisfactorily, but well, tough. I'm unsatisfied too, and would very dearly like to know what happens next.
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Date: 2009-04-11 06:57 pm (UTC)There were just a few things that bothered me. The description of her hair seems a little odd and out of place - no one else is described here, and the only thing we get about her is her hair. The list of metaphors seems a little long, and then comes the really confusing part. Throughout the rest of this there is no hint of higher technology; there are domes, weaponry, forges, ancient mirrors, but there are no computers, no cars (that we see), no running water (that we see)... It seems ridiculously out of place for there to be a reference to hexadecimal number codes for colors here. It sort of parallels with Pern in my head. They might have had computers once, or come from an advanced Earth, but this feels like generations after the loss of any advanced technology. Despite their best efforts, much information would have been lost - there would have had to have been a decision about what would have been kept and what could be done without, and I really don't see hexadecimal number codes making the cut. And without an AIVAS device to resurrect the information, I don't really see that it would have resurfaced.
I do hope there's an explanation for the horseshoe nail in the rest of the text somewhere... *chuckle* I'm just as confused as she is, and I like horses!
First sentence, third section, after the dash. I think you meant "so", not "ao". :)
The description of his clothing was a little off - it took me until you told us that his chest was bare to realize that the red linen wrap was only waist down. I'd imagined it chest down, with the sashes at the waist, or something like a toga. ... It sounds rather hot, though.