I tried to gauge his degree of restlessness and looked at Sorgrad. “So, how much longer are you going to be kicking your heels here? I thought Shiv said that Kalion was going to intercede for you with Draximal? Wasn’t that what Planir told him to do?”
Sorgrad nodded. “Draximal’s all squared away. We’re taking a boat for Col in four days’ time.”
That was a relief; ’Gren should be able to contain himself for that long before looking for mischief. Hadrumal didn’t strike me as a good place for him to be bored. I frowned. “That’s going to be a long hike to Lescar. Wouldn’t you be better off waiting for passage to Peorle?”
“We’re not going to Lescar.” Sorgrad drained his tankard. “We thought we’d visit Solura.”
Pered looked at him with some surprise. “Shiv told me you were mage-born. You’re not going to stay here and study?”
“Why should I?” demanded Sorgrad, but not aggressively. “Magebirth’s no more than a minor inconvenience to me.”
“You know, half the Council are banging their heads against that.” Pered heaved a contented sigh. “I do like seeing wizards nonplussed.”
“Solura?” I pursed my lips. “Going to look up Gilmarten by any chance?”
“You never know who we might run into,” admitted Sorgrad with a dangerous smile. I had his measure; magebirth might have been no more than an unwelcome aberration to be ruthlessly suppressed until now, but having seen its uses in action he wasn’t about to pass up a chance of turning it into a useful tool for the future. I wasn’t going to criticize; Messire might have agreed the wizards could keep the song book but I’d be looking out for useful tricks in my copy, now that I’d seen Aritane’s abilities were as much to be envied as feared.
“ ’Gren?” I looked a question at him.
He shrugged. “Just going back to Lescar seemed a bit boring. We’ve missed the best of the fighting season anyway. I fancy seeing what trouble’s brewing on the Mandarkin border.”
“And while we’re there, we can make sure Anyatimm up that way have the truth of this summer’s goings-on in the Gap,” added Sorgrad ominously.
“So we’re all off on our travels again.” I meant to sound bright and optimistic, but somehow my words came out tinged with gloom.
“Speak for yourself, darling,” said Pered with a touch of bitterness. “I’m going nowhere far from my copy table, not unless Shiv finally gets sick of dancing to Planir’s tune.”
“Why not see if Shiv can get a commission to go and look for more mage-born among the Forest Folk or up in Gidesta?” I suggested.
“We’ll be back for the Winter Solstice,” promised Sorgrad. “Relshaz or Col?”
My spirits lifted. “Relshaz? Charoleia will be there, and she’s bound to have news from Halice.”
“You bring this sworn man of yours along for us to meet,” ’Gren ordered. “What’s he been doing with himself all summer anyway, while we’ve been off having fun?”
“I think he’ll have been having a harder time of it than you think,” said Pered, all solemn pretense. “After all, he’s been working with Casuel.”
“And most men would prefer an honest fight with a horde of howling Mountain Men to that,” I agreed.
“Then he’ll be good and ready to make a Winter Solstice to remember,” Sograd nodded. “Make sure you bring him with you.”
“Are you going to ask him his intentions?” I wasn’t about to have that happen if I could avoid it.
“We might just do that,” said Sorgrad. “Anyway, what’s he going to make of you coming back like a bad debt, full of your adventures and rattling the Archmage’s coin?”
“A man could get jealous,” observed ’Gren.
“It sounds as if he’s done well enough for himself,” I countered. “What I’ve got to decide is just what to tell him about our little expedition.”
“You want to tell him just enough to make him feel guilty about spending his summer safe and secure, dancing attendance on that prince of his,” advised Pered with the faintest hint of malice. I knew that was really directed at Planir; if anything ever drove a wedge between him and Shiv, it was the Archmage’s demands on his lover’s time.
“Ryshad will have been working just as hard as me,” I assured them all. “Just doing different things.”
He’d better have been, I added silently to myself, or all this year’s winnings would be for nothing. The game still wasn’t over until I saw how Ryshad had played his hand.
“I’ll tell you something for free,” ’Gren said critically. “You really should do something about your hair before he sees it.”
EOS Spotlight
SF/Fantasy—an escape for people who can’t cope with reality?
I often wonder why people condemn SF/Fantasy as “escapism.” All fiction is escapist in some sense, taking the reader into an imagined world even if only to one set in Manchester. So what sets SF/Fantasy apart from other writing? Given it ranges from space opera to alternative history to heroic fantasy to cyberpunk, the common link I see is the basic question “what if… ?”
So what questions does Fantasy ask? Quests certainly feature; think of Frodo’s journey to destroy the One Ring, exploring moral responsibility along the way. That aspect of the genre is as old as Arthurian legend. Tolkien was the Merton Professor of English at Oxford University, and much fantasy is based on eminent scholarship and detailed research. Alternate histories rely on the reader’s basic knowledge of past events, otherwise they are pointless. Fantasy readers are encouraged to look outside their own culture, taken to a spectacular array of different realms, where societies defy easy assumptions, often to be challenged by the same questions on race, sex, and tolerance that perplex the world we live in. Writers such as Melanie Rawn and Robin Hobb ask what if magic really existed, how would societies and governments function? What if there really are dragons? Anne McCaffrey has woven an intricate and intriguing world around that idea. What if people from our world find themselves caught up in the stuff of legend? Alan Garner’s Weirdstone of Brisingamen rests on that notion, so does Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
What if all the gray compromises of modern living could be cut through, with a broadsword for preference? Heroic fantasy, often with a hard edge all its own in writers like David Gemmell, pursues those ideas and their unforeseen consequences. Much of heroic fantasy is highly virtuous; simple tales where evil is punished and right triumphs. This may well be a welcome escape from the grim reality of news bulletins, but unconsciously absorbing the teachings of Aslan as a child makes aggression and injustice all the more intolerable for the adult.
At its best, SF/Fantasy offers answers to all of these questions, but more than that, the genre gives us superb stories. Characters leap off the page and grab you by the throat, vivid description transports you with no need for twenty-fourth-century technology, plots keep you turning the pages long past lights out. Celebrated modern writers such as Iain Banks find their talents equally at home in the best of mainstream fiction and of SF/Fantasy.
And then there is the nonsense. We have the surreal imaginations of Tom Holt and Robert Rankin, the inspired comedy of Terry Pratchett. Laughter is certainly an escape, but aren’t we all refreshed by that release? For satire and parody to work, the reader also has to share the author’s piercing eye for the absurd in the everyday world. While mainstream fiction can be inclined to take itself rather too seriously, SF/Fantasy gleefully sends up the ridiculous within the genre with titles such as The Tough Guide to Fantasyland.
So is SF/Fantasy an escape for people who can’t cope with reality? Not as far as I’m concerned. Reality is a refuge for those who can’t handle the challenge of SF/Fantasy!