CoJ: Preface through Chapter 4

[JasonPratt]

Click here for the contents thread and chapter links

Preface

My wife, my beloved;
I promise.
I can explain.
I can explain where I went. And why.
I can explain why I didn't explain, when I returned.
I didn't explain...because I was afraid.
Our duties require us to be apart, sometimes—as you yourself are gone. Always we have kept in touch, even when apart.
But . . . this time I could not do so. Not because a power prevented me; but . . . because . . .
. . . how can I explain . . . ?

I wanted to tell you. You deserve to know, because you love me. But I couldn't find the courage—and now you are gone.
And you refuse to keep in touch this time.
I deserve no better.

But, how to tell you . . . how to explain . . .
so much pain and horror and death . . .
and I am responsible . . .

I brought back books from that world. I tried to save something.
I needed to find a place to begin.
I met people there. This is their story—the story that I am responsible for destroying.
They never knew that, of course. I never told them.

There is one who suffered most. She also was responsible—for terrible things. She also wrote a confession.
I will begin with her story. And I see another I met; who is also part of her story. Good.

I will follow their history, then; using her book and those of others to guide my search. It won't take long, by our standards—I can write it in a day; you can read it in an hour.

I am a coward. I rather would tell you a story of them—

than simply to tell you the truth.

But, I promise: you shall have the truth.

In this life, or in the next.


[Skip real author commentary, go to next chapter]

[JasonPratt]

Notes from the real author...  ;D

The main narrator of this book (and its sequels) is himself a fictional character of the story. I'll reserve the first post of a thread for the chapter material, so any posts you see from me in the same thread afterward are really me and not the main authorial character. ;)

For public (and most private) discussion purposes, I always refer to the main author character as the Preface Author or the PA for short. This is not how people refer to him in-story, but that will be dealt with much later. (Much, much, much, much later.)

Readers are welcome to give him another nickname as you wish; whatever makes things easier.


The forum engine doesn't allow me to reproduce normal carriage returns and paragraph indentions; a problem made more problematic by the fact that I use unusual stylisms like metaparagraphs. Any double-carriage returns in the text here on the forum represent identical double-carriage returns in the text, not normal new paragraphs.

I may however adjust the reproduction on the forum later to add visible carriage returns for every new paragraph and a further carriage return for metaparagraphs, depending on how things look once I start dealing in longer paragraphs. I just thought I should explain the odd look here meanwhile.

[JasonPratt]

Contents and chapter links
Previous chapter

Introduction -- To A World

I will tell you a story, beloved;
a story of a cradle.

Once,
there was a world,
bobbing and spinning within the center of her space,
infused with life, alit by lights both great and small,
upon her and above her.
From the beginning, she had borne her children
—not to stay, but to leave.

But, the children did not always play well.
And, they did not always leave well.
Sometimes they pushed each other out.

Sometimes, they pushed each other hard.

On this cradle lay a vastness of mountains and forests, lakes and islands, rivers and valleys and plains. Half the cradle, the children called Mikon; the other half was water.
On the land, the children lived.
The children often grew into monsters.

Fires and floods, storms and quakes, blood and steel and wood and life, crackled and cracked. This happened many times in Mikon.
And monsters laughed—
while a mother cried, and a father sighed...

I look upon them with my power, beloved—
with the power that doomed them.
I look through their space; I see their times.
I read their words.
I read their minds.

I will allow them to tell their story, letting them lead where I will look, respecting them.
I will live within them; I will let them teach me.
I will let them speak through me, as they would have spoken.
I will tell what they would have told, had they been able.
I will do no less.

I can do no more.
no more.

❖ ❖ ❖

And so I look along the line of their time. Three sources gleam as lights to begin my hunt, through the darkness of their history—that they do not know has almost reached its end.

I see a stag, stepping cautiously through the dappled shadows of early night, cropping grass as it moved from place to place, comfortable in its confidence, instinctively trusting its nose and ears in the quiet misty dusk.
Its reactions to food, and brush, and paths of unquiet travel were largely predictable; but, the buck couldn't know this.
So, it was entirely natural for the deer to pass too close to one particular tree.

From behind that tree, now on the deer's left flank, an unnatural shriek erupted.
The deer's heart surged! —it leaped away in the other direction, responding precisely in line with its instincts.
Consequently, the deer leaped straight through a wall of brush.
The stag thrashed the entangling branches and leaves, ripping with its rack of antlers. The threatened attack had not yet come, but the stag couldn't ponder what this meant. It only struggled, eventually tearing free on the brush's farther side, bleeding from minor cuts, its right eye swollen shut from a poke by a branch.
The stag gasped for air, and gathered itself to leap again—
—one leg crumpled as weight was applied.

The deer crept through the tiny glade, regressing to cries of infancy.
But, it couldn't bear the physical stress; and so it fell, quietly.
Its ears twitched; its nostrils flared; its neck bobbed, this way and that. All these movements made it feel more comfortable—slightly. Nothing gave it new signs to fear.
The stag began to relax. The starlight-speckled glade was swirling in the deer's euphoric relief.
The deer felt sleepy.

The deer felt a spike punch through its lungs and heart.
It jerked in response—then spiraled deeper into its relief...no leap could save it from such a wound.
The deer felt only its final need—as if to sleep.
The spike stabbed, twice again. The deer felt neither stab.
The dull-black spike, longer than the body of the deer, withdrew: gripped, by a black hand, of a black arm, glistening with sweat, stretching from the nearby brush. A tall, limber creature raised itself on legs with muscles taut as cables.
Unlike the deer, the only hair the creature wore was thin and close on the top of its head.
Unlike the deer, the creature wore...more—though not much more than hair: short barbadense trousers, harvested from Manavilin Island; woven in Fyzabad City; dyed—black to match the creature's skin.
The deer would have thought the creature a monster, had it been able to judge.
The creature thought of himself as a man.
But he wondered, as he laid his palm on the deer he had pierced, how close he was to being a monster.
The man did not gloat over his crafty slaying. He had alerted the deer, not only to make it entangle itself—but to give it a fair running start.
He would have trotted silently afterward, tracking the sounds of flight, the sight of starlight-scattering flicks in the night, even the smell of the blood.
Had it escaped detection, he would have bidden the deer goodspeed.
The deer would not, could not, have begun to understand fairness.
Sometimes, the man wished neither could he.
In recent weeks especially.

The man returned through the forest, bearing the body away from the quiet nightly hum, the patchy starlit glades. He returned: to the brightening fires of controlled destruction, by which his species survived—even when at peace.
His species hadn't been at peace for several seasons.
He passed pickets; then paced between the fires at night—a creature who killed: a man of the Guacu-ara...the Hunting Cry.
The men and women around him didn't see him, as he carried his catch to the cooks of the camp; or, if they happened to see him, they looked away.
They did not speak to him; because he never really spoke to them.
Because he never really spoke to them, words had boiled his brain for weeks. He had bought a book and pen.
So he returned, to where he had put his small, blank book; through dangerous men who shrank away if they saw him, back to each other and back to their fires, back to polishing swords and axes, back to the safety that lay in numbers.
For this man, Seifas, safety had never lain in numbers; but in movement, in striking first and striking last.
Yet, now, as he slid into his own small tent, he faced an enemy he could no longer avoid, with which he must now do battle—perhaps to the death.

He faced his own despair.

Seifas sat, knelt, lay himself down; turned up his small lantern; and started to write:
"It all has fallen apart . . ."


[Skip real author commentary, go to next chapter]

[JasonPratt]

Note from the real author...  8)

Yes, there are subauthor characters in the book. Sometimes whole chapters (though never very long ones) are written by them, although most of the narration will eventually be given through the Preface Author. I needed to distinguish the difference in print, naturally, but color printing would have been prohibitively expensive. (I guess? -- maybe not so much anymore. Will look into that for future printing reference...) I meant for my typesetters to find a different font for the subauthor portions, one that was slightly smaller physically than the standard font and size we were going to use; but they didn't understand and so just chose the next fontsize down. Which resulted in several reviewers commenting that the smaller font hurt their eyes.

Here, however, I can try out different font colors for the various subauthors. (There will be three, two of whom will be introduced in the first section.)

Why use subauthors at all? Because I wanted to help get across the notion more strongly that the Preface Author is partially basing his account on books he brought back; and also because sometimes the effect would be more 'formally' dramatic than for the PA to simply narrate their inner thoughts and experiences. Also, I realized he wouldn't be good at that kind of thing to start with so would want to use them as a crutch more often in the beginning. In later books (and even as this book progresses) he uses them directly less often, as he becomes used to writing "as they would have spoken".

The concept also allows me to play with three levels of reflection on the past, and three levels of foreshadowing about things that are going to happen in the future. Seifas always writes a few hours after the main plot's most recent events; the next author writes several years later; the third author writes a few decades later. The PA himself is discovering the history as he goes along (using abilities beyond reference to the books, which are hinted at in the narrative), and so usually reports what's going on at the point of time of the main narrative. (Although he can jump back and forth somewhat to follow other plot strands as he feels necessary. I'll have him clarify that for his absent wife when it happens, don't worry.)

Why use a fictional main author at all?!

The only thing I can say without major plot spoilage is that doing so allows me to solve a problem of introducing the PA as a character and why he's important to the main plot, related to the end of the whole series. After first drafting the novel in 2001, I worked for YEARS trying to figure out a way to feasibly tell the story without using him. If I was only looking three or six books ahead (or more... :mrgreen:), if I wasn't already planning out what happens at the end of the series, I wouldn't need him. Consequently, film versions of the first several books, if a decision was made in advance not to ever go beyond them, wouldn't need him at all.

(Sidenote: forum members may have already noticed that I don't like using past-tense plural "were" as hypothetical verbage for singular subjects like "I" or "he". That's a grammatic glitch in English, which long ago became standard grammatic procedure, that I'm attempting to correct by example. ;) )

Looking over this first longer chapter portation, I'm increasingly unsure if single carriage returns are going to work in the long run for identifying new paragraphs under normal circumstances. Members are welcome to suggest alternative methods. (The forum engine doesn't like initial tabs or extra spaces, and eliminates them on posting---while keeping them in the text code! Weird.)

Tomorrow, the first actual chapter! (Or even two!  ::))

[JasonPratt]

Contents and chapter links
Previous chapter

Section One -- Turning Points
Chapter 1 -- Words That Are Tears

___It all has fallen apart.
___Again.

___Sometimes at night I see the glow of another village burning.
___Behind closed eyes, at night, I see that glow again: of coals that shouldn't burn.
___I don't have tears enough, to wash away those fires.
___Why does this always happen?
___Where are the Agents?
___Where is the Eye??
___I don't even know why such a war is called a Culling...

___Matron Cami might have known. But she is gone—the woman who tried so hard to teach us juacuara something other than how to hurl a javelin fifty paces or to knock out a brain with a blade.
___She tried to give us poetry for our souls; to help express and judge the events of our lives; to make some sense of the hidden world behind the obvious.
___My Matron is gone.
___She vanished one day.
___. . . perhaps that was best. Her heart would have broken, in bearing the tragedies afterward.
___No . . .
___No, not that. She would have led us, and we would have followed her, putting our faith in her wisdom and strength.
___Was that why she was taken?
___Was that why she went away?
___Other klerosa than Cami have vanished: the indisputable sign of a Culling. All klerosa—the ones allotted true power, true healing—always go, and never are seen again.
___Leaving us alone to put our trust in...
___. . . what?
___My weapon? My body? My peer? My commander? These shall all fail me. I know this distinctly.
___Trust in the magi? They surely did not disappear all at once! They chose their sides and disbanded the Cadre, and scoured the skies and the lakes and the trees with their wrath!
___A year they did this; then, within the slopes of a season, they also fell silent—leaving the wounds they had made.
___I remember Qarfax, who claimed four faces guarded him, so that he would never be caught by surprise. He had hired a garrison for his private tower: I and some troops from the city of Wye.
___His fear drenched the air of his tower.
___Whenever a man—moreover a magus—invests his soul within a place, his presence seeps into the stones.
___But when we awoke one night for our watch, I knew with some others: the feel was gone. We wouldn't find Qarfax alive.
___We found some ash on the floor of his room instead, where he had watched and waited.

___We never learned for what he had waited. We left his service that very moment.
___We also left his regalia, on the floor, within the ash—no one would touch the remains of a magus.

___The students of magic—the dabblers and the apprentices—will soon recover their masters' work. I serve one now: Portunista.
___But, I don't trust her either...
___No, nothing mortal remains to trust. Not even my brethren, destroyed by the wars of the Culling.
___I have no home. No family.
___No hope.

___Some men say they only trust themselves.
___I am not so foolish. I know my strengths; and I know my weaknesses. I might as well lift myself into the air by pulling my arms...!
___No answers. No hope.
___No justice.

___These thoughts all dart behind my eyes, after the middle of the night, in front of the glow of villages burning, until I spill them onto paper.
___I am a soldier. My words are my tears.
___They don't wash away the fires.


Skip real author commentary and go to next chapter

[JasonPratt]

Note from the real author...

The red text indicates the main fictional author (the "Preface Author") is reproducing text directly from one of the subauthors, specifically Seifas. (Though also translating for the PA's wife. I imagine there are idiosyncracies of how the PA writes that color the translation. ;) ) In the printed version of CoJ, the subauthor text is simply one size smaller font, although hopefully on any new edition or reprint I can get my typesetters to adjust to a different font instead of changing the size per se. (Or else just do the typesetting myself and save some money.)

The three underscore lines starting every paragraph are NOT in the printed text of CoJ. They're my experiment for the forum in trying to hack an equivalent of paragraph indentions, since the forum engine apparently doesn't like tabs or extra spaces which would normally show that. (If anyone knows how to make BBCode include paragraph indentations, please let me know!) I may go back and remove them eventually.

Most of the book (and even more of the sequels) will not be "sourced" like this, but will be much more traditional narrative form. But to get the concept on the page, and to manage the initial information about what the situation is in the main narrative and how things got to that point, I chose to use this method often in the first twenty pages or so. The two (or arguably three) main action sequences of the first fifty pages are written in traditional narrative form.

(This is information anyone could get from quickly thumbing through the print version of the book, but since that isn't an option online I'm relating it this way in commentary for the chapter.)

[JasonPratt]

Contents and chapter links
Previous chapter

Chapter 2 -- The Obligation Of A Bleeding Soul

___From the dark man in his darkness, my beloved, I turn; looking forward seven summers.
___On the edge of mountains and plains, a bright clean palace gleams.
___Within its halls, a woman walks; slowly, stiffly, smoothly, straight and tall.
___Her long auburn hair is dancing with life; her face, however, can no longer show so much expression. Her royal gown of greens and browns, trails behind. Her servants pause to smile and bow.
___They love the fragile smile she gives in return; they know she cannot give much more, and wonder about the tears they see on her cheeks. Some of them think they know why.
___Some of them speculate wildly.
___Some of them are correct.
___She wants them to know—more than they know; more than they will be comfortable knowing.
___One day, they will learn why they see those tears.
___But, that time cannot come, until she takes a first step of hundreds.
___Smoothly she glides, stepping out into her quiet garden, which she touches.
___Slowly she glides, up the baked stone face of her tower, which she does not touch; although as always she checks it for wear.
___She gently steps into her wide upper room, between its narrow encircling columns.
___A servant waits, having ascended by stairs curving up through the floor. The servant has brought what she asked, and sets it on a tilted frame.
___The woman nods to him, and with a gracious gesture she dismisses him.
___He will do the same for her on each first day, each week, for years to come.
___The woman carefully lowers her willowy body into a nearby tall-backed chair, billows of hair arranging in comfort around her.
___She pulls the frame to her. Upon the frame: a shallow tray filled smooth with clay.
___The woman casts her mind back through the years; back to the days when she leaped and crouched and stormed through life.
___Then she reaches, and sinks a stylus-tip into the clay.
___Along with this she sinks her thoughts.

❖ ❖ ❖

___I am the Empress of Mikon.
___I do not know how long I have, before the next great change.

___My people have often represented my body and face; indeed, moreso than any woman's in history. Somewhere a sage is collecting a record of all my public utterances.
___But, the paintings and sculptures and statues of me, are only of my body. Even my sayings do not reveal my soul, my mind, my history.
___My people deserve to know, to remember, the truth about me. I remember. I have failed in so many things, and most of my people do not know— or do not remember.
___They should know. They must remember.
___On a day to come, their disillusionment, though divisive, still will serve its place in the fate of the nations.
___And, perhaps, this testimony shall also serve historians, helping them piece together events of the past few years. I held a central place in the history of our lands, of Mikon, after the most recent Culling.
___I did not know what privilege I had been granted.
___Oh, I surely asserted my "privileges"! I thought I snatched them by my will, from the anarchy of that time.
___I was a fool.
___Already I hear the ardent denials, from people who shout my name with such devotion. I treasure and bless those people in my heart, more than they can imagine. And those paintings and sculptures showing the ground beneath my feet becoming fertile, watered by my eye-closed tears—they are not wrong. No, they are far more right than they know. Yet none of them, nor the songs which call me "meek" and "stern" and "gracious" . . .
___None of these tell why.
___They don't even know from how deep a wound, to myself and others, those tears seep.
___I dug my wound, bit by bit, filled with decay and ooze and bile. It swelled with infection.
___It had to be lanced.
___And even now, I pay the price.

___but my price is small, compared to what others have paid...
___for me.

❖ ❖ ❖

___Page by page she scratches her soul along with the clay.
___Every week, a new blank tray. A day a week, a page a day; the fine, small letters she cuts in the clay, as if into powdered flour. It doesn't weary her, but emotionally.
___Emotionally, and in one other way.
___She mustn't write more than one page a week.
___She still has many things to do, many people for whom she must be strong, before she dies.
___She will not kill her body through her writing.
___Not yet.

❖ ❖ ❖

___Whatever use it may be to scholars later, this is a testimony first—of the person that I was.
___I am a maga; even though I haven't needed to use those skills in years.
___But what I was, still echoes in what I am.
___It would be misleading to say that I am no longer a maga. Every study affects the soul. My soul is still here; although my body has flowed away, as every mortal body flows—as the curving of a waterfall.
___Scars and all, my soul is still here.

___I am not against magi—not in principle.
___But I was not a good one.
___And that makes all the difference.

___When I began what I considered to be my self-carved path to glory, I had not long passed my twentieth year; having spent some time already in preparation and training for the magical arts.
___I'd always enjoyed my use of power—a habit that wouldn't soon change—and so had devised a clever scheme of revenge against...someone I had known as a girl.
___I had been certain that I would escape detection.
___I had been caught, of course.
___This was when I learned true fear.
___Had I been properly punished—and I did deserve death after some demeaning service— I might have learned wisdom through fear. But, my masters delayed my punishment.
___I now suspect that they were debating, whether to risk the loss of my potential—to the world at large, or to particular schemes of their own, the Eye only knows.
___Then the Culling began; thanks to fighting among the Cadrists.
___I also know the Rogues had a hand in the Culling as well.
___All the klerosa vanished; and the nations fell apart; and I was released when the Cadre disbanded. Why, I never found out; and had no wish to discover. I took myself away to survive in obscurity, not to become an expendable pawn: the fate of most apprentices.
___That was a terrible year. Fool that I was, I tried to tell myself how exciting my life had become. Then the fighting began to slacken as one by one the surviving Cadrists also disappeared. Bands of soldiers crossed the land, seeking any advantage, competing simply to live.
___I also needed advantages—and resources.
___So, I gathered squads; building them into companies. I thought of myself as dar- ing, and innovative, and defiant—swimming against the currents of history!
___Hardly. I threw myself headfirst downstream into the river, trying to swim more quickly than anyone else.
___and . . . I who am thought an example of virtue today, was once . . . something else.
___I was worse than any mere flirt. I enjoyed edging men in that direction, with or without my magic, achieving power for myself at their expense. And if it bothered them, so be it—what were they doing around me at all?!
___Fortunately, I was distracted enough by my practical problems: I never gave my full attention to this addictive little hobby.
___Yet, even now . . .
___I feel such burning shame in my heart, I wonder if steel would quench it...

___No. This is only another temptation: to defy the price of what I have done, to pretend that I can make it go away.
___What I have done is real—forever.
___Further crippling myself will never help me. Adding to my crimes will only add to the burdens I carry beneath the unavoidable Eye.
___I can be crushed beneath those burdens.
___Or, I can let love to help me to stand—and to walk—and perhaps one day to run.
___I do not believe that I shall be running again in this world.
___I am grateful, even to walk...

___Now my thoughts have turned that way, so I will follow the bend in the path I walked so poorly.
___But, not that far. Not yet.
___That cliff must be descended; but not yet.

[JasonPratt]

Note from the real author...

And so the second subauthor is introduced. (The third one won't appear until early in Section Two, so this is all the reader has to deal with for a while. ;) )

Considering the color of her attire, I decided to try a green text for this online version. I may fiddle around a bit with available shades, though, or even get rid of it altogether (if members comment against it).

If readers notice some lines lack starting capitalization, or lack ending punctuation, that's an intentional stylism. In the ancient real world, people spoke what they were writing or reading out loud, and I'm trying to get across that quality on the printed page in various ways. That's also a main reason for the "metaparagraphs", where I add an extra carriage return before (and sometimes also after) a new paragraph, to try to set up a bit longer reading pause.

This also explains the occasional comma unusually placed--I'm trying to dial in the rhythm of what's being written, without completely voiding English comma rules. (In any future printing, however, I will certainly go back and delete some of those odd commas, since in hindsight I don't think they work as well as I was originally "hearing". The sequels definitely don't have as many of those odd commas!)

Oh, and the whole series is written in a varying rhythmical scansion.  8-) It's there for readers to appreciate if they want to, but should (usually) be transparent if a reader doesn't want to bother with it. But that explains why my word order and phrasing sometimes look a little weird.

Incidentally, if you're wondering how anyone could cut letters into tough clay as if into powdered flour?--good eye. ;) That's an intentional clue she's doing something that isn't normal while writing. This will be explained by the end of Book 4, but I'll be giving progressively more information about what's going on every once in a while until then. (Only Book 1 is in print right now, btw.)

As a general rule, if something looks like a discrepancy, it probably isn't. (Probably. An error concerning what someone would see out the windows of a tower managed to creep into the final printed text in a later chapter, ironically while I was trying to fix another real error before sending the text to the printers! I'll point that out when we get to the chapter.)

Edited to add: if the three underscore marks at the beginning of new paragraphs are too distracting, let me know if you'd prefer no paragraph indentations at all, or if you know how to make the BBCode include proper indentations.

[JasonPratt]

Contents and chapter links
Previous chapter

Chapter 3 -- The Cry

___Along with this woman, I turn back my gaze, beloved; back to those fateful days: where I find the dark man—and his same dark struggle.
___Seifas dips his pen into his ink, and debates of slaying one last man...

❖ ❖ ❖

___The final apprentices now are rising from the shadows, trying to claim their masters' power.
___My current commander, Portunista, is such a one. She makes it clear, that she is her only goal. To that degree, she is honest.
___And, as long as her troops stay warm and fed, and have some time for leisure, I suppose they won't complain.
___I would complain. I am a subcommander.
___But to preserve that authority, I must stifle my conscience.

___I hate it.
___I can feel my soul eroding away.
___I should just leave.

___but I have nowhere to go.

___...I should kill myself—rather than offer a silent assent to the dissolution around me.

___What is my duty?
___Should I risk my soul to chance that I might live, to see the return of justice?
___What chance is that?
___If I cannot decide—it might as well be no chance.
___And if justice will not be fulfilled—then there is no hope.
___And if the cries in my heart are hopeless...
___. . . I might as well be dead.

___I have a small knife. I bought it for this.
___I see it where it lies, awaiting my choice...

___I do not fear death, as other men do. I am one of the Guacu-ara.
___If there is nothing, I shall not know it. If there is something, then I will fight or I will serve; and that is no different from now.
___So, shall the cries within me be fulfilled? The knife awaits my answer...

___If the cries are only my wishes, they are not a reliable guide—my wishes are not the ground of All. I won't continue my pain for a self-delusion.
___If the cries are only induced by the world around me, then they are unthinking urges. Only to fill such hungers would cast my mind into death—or else I am there al- ready. I might as well complete it.
___If the cries have only been trained into me by men, then where did they receive their notions of justice? From where I have said? Their own cries will only be hunger or lies!
___I might as well kill myself.

___A shameful act, you say? The act of a coward? Not the mark of a man or warrior?
___But, if there is no justice, then why should I agree? From my own pride? To kill my life is the ultimate pride—the deadliest victory over mere instinct!
___Should I agree, because of your pride? I might as well prefer my own—and then, to the knife!
___Should I agree, for you perceive justice? How is your mirror then better than mine?? And if I cannot see justice, even the blurriest vision, your witness to me also fails!
___Even my reason can have no meaning: without true justice, my motives for thinking are only irrational.

___So.
___I am a cripple, deluded. I should completely free myself.
___A knife to the artery stings but a bit.

___A death in battle? What can a death mean, in a world without justice!?
___I will seek elsewhere, for satisfaction—or else for oblivion!

___. . . . . . yet, I choose to stay, still.

___Why?
___Not from lack of nerve or skill to do the deed.
___Why??

___Because, whatever else is real—so is my cry for justice.
___It may not be what I think it is—but it is something.

___What does this tell me?
___To myself I ask: what do I hunger for? Why am I starving inside my mind and soul?!
___I want to see the return of justice!
___Ah—it is only my instinct, only my training, only...
___Perhaps. Perhaps. . . . . .

___Listen, knife. What rests beside you, there in the shadow? You I have known for a day. What is this I have known, for years?
___This weapon, I say, is my aasagai.
___No, you say; that is an axe.
___Oh? And why should I listen to you?
___Here is a rigid, finger-thin needle, as long as some men are tall, with sharpened pommel and infighting quillions—I hold it along the shaft of its length, and twirl it around myself for defense, until I punch past the guard of my foe...this is an axe?!

___If you were to say "a spear" I might agree. It shares some traits with things called spear. It has no likeness to things called axe.

___Yet, if I mistook, and held an axe instead, you still would be absurd to say "not an aasagai"—unless you had some accurate notion of what an aasagai is; and what it is not.

___And I can tell this difference!
___Mere desires of my heart, are not justice! Mere training is not of itself justice!
___I do perceive the distinction, the disparity!
___Somehow . . . despite any blurrings and flaws and mistakes . . .

___. . . I must have some sight of true justice!

___And, if justice exists...then hope must exist.
___And you, knife, offer no hope at all.

___Would Matron Cami be proud for me...?
___how I miss her

___We of the Guacu-ara never were told of our parents. Our ranks were our brothers; our Matrons our mothers. But Cami loved us: the children she never would bear, whom she had forsworn for our sake.
___I do not know where my birth-mother is; nor the only mother I ever have known.
___But now I am sure that someday, somehow, my cry for justice will be answered.
___And with that knowledge, I find I can sleep.
___For tonight.

Skip JRP's comments and go to next chapter

[JasonPratt]

Note from the real author...

While this isn't the final chapter of subauthor contemplation (bringing the reader up to speed on what's happening in the main narrative), the next chapter will be much more traditionally narrative. Also the first (or in some ways second) action scene.  8-)

Yes, the novel is named after this chapter, more or less. I had originally been going to call the novel "Cry for Justice", but for various reasons having to do with sequel titling and phraseologies at a climactic moment near the end, I switched the preposition to "of".

In editing, I came very close to deleting this chapter altogether, since it provides almost no further background information (aside from a clever way to introduce Seifas' weapon, which can also be seen on the book's cover in an abstract fashion) and delays the arrival of the first (or first main) action scene. But I found I had worked the 'event' of this chapter too thoroughly into the composition of subsequent chapters, regarding the development of Seifas' character. In short, I needed some way for him to resolve to go on with his life without deciding that he himself was the ground of justice, in comparison and contrast with other characters later. But in my final main redraft of the book (when I trimmed it from 206Kwords to 144K) I tried hard to shorten the difficult initial chapters, including this one, to move things along as quickly as possible to the main narrative.

Seifas uses a variation of the theistic argument from morality to talk himself out of suicide, but phrased and formulated in such a way as a contemplative pre-Judeo-Christian from various cultures might have (and did occasionally) put it in the real world.

If you see some obvious holes and weaknesses in the argument, that's okay, I know they're there. It's meant to be a tool for someone talking themselves out of suicide, not an airtight dissertation, and besides I don't even use the argument myself. Also, I'm going to be playing with the weaknesses later in the book.  ;) (After the halfway point, so that chapter won't be posted online.)

Still, I respect the AfM, so gave it a fairly detailed abbreviation, as much as I thought a character of Seifas' schooling would demand on short notice.

This is the (second) longest bit of metaphysics in the book, and one of only two presented in a formal argument--the other of which looks at the matter from a quite different angle with very different conclusions!--so aside from the occasional rumination you needn't worry about any more of this kind of thing.

"Guacu-ara" and "juacuar(a)" are based on the South American native word from which we eventually derived "cougar" and "jaguar". It's a hard "G" and normal "j" (not silent) in the story, respectively; the former for designating the formal organization, the latter as an informal racial designation. One of the more unexpectedly difficult things I discovered, was how to describe Seifas physically from character perspectives, because while he looks a little alien aside from some easily obvious features (jet-black skin, white irises) he looks just as human to other people as they do to each other. So for example a reader might be thinking he has the tufted ears of a cat, but he doesn't; but none of the characters would notice his ears look just like theirs. A real world Zulu or Masai actor would doubtless play him in the film, without much alteration.

The term "aasagai" is based on the realword "assegai", a Zulu term for spear. I altered it partly because neither Seifas nor any other character are actually speaking Zulu, but mostly because it doesn't resemble any kind of Zulu spear. So I took the Dutch/Zulu term for vulture, "aasvogel", death-bird, and built the new word from that, "death stick". (Since there wasn't a Zulu alphabet for the longest time, the two words are probably identical anyway, but I've had people wonder why I 'misspelled' assegai. I know my H. Rider Haggard, I assure you. ;) )

While most of the character names have real-world parallels of one or another kind, "Seifas" was invented by me for the story--mainly because of his morose tone at the beginning. He sighs a lot.   ;D This will start to change next chapter. (For a while...  ;) )

[JasonPratt]

Contents and chapter links
Previous chapter

Chapter 4 -- Prices Of Sheep

___The following day, Seifas assigned himself to scouting—again.
___The sun threw shadows through forests, as he loped around close hills and quiet coves of lakes. The shadows and light lay patchy on him. Seifas embraced and used the shadows, sent by sun or stars; but even after the night before, the shadow of his life still lay on him.
___He didn't embrace that shadow. He bore it in shame.
___While on patrol, he wouldn't be fighting a losing battle against his commander's selfishness.
___Yet, he also knew that by his absence the battle was lost.
___Still, out all alone, he could forget the shadows in his life—
___until he chanced on a forest glade, where a girl sat watching a flock of sheep.

___Eighteen hours later, Seifas would record what happened—and so commit his journal to an empire not yet born:

___"The midsummer sun glares into the glade—reminding me, that what I do will be seen by the Eye. I can feel myself, there in those shadows once more, wondering what to do.
___"Should I tell the brigade?
___"Should I warn the girl and her family, to protect their precious flock?
___"Should I simply leave, saying nothing to anyone?
___"I...we...should be helping this girl!
___"But, we also need to eat.
___"Yet—if we take the sheep, then how do we differ from brigands??"

___Weighed by his doubts, Seifas waited.
___He wanted to pray to Macumza, the Agent who guarded the paths of the Hunting Cry. But only a Matron could have that communion—and now the Matrons were gone.
___He would have even prayed to the Eye for guidance. But the Eye seemed far beyond every star in the sky.
___Waiting was easier, and doing nothing.
___So, he did.
___The soldiers he soon was seeing, slipping through the trees, didn't wait.
___They acted. Although, like many men, they couldn't even stalk a sheep.
___The animals scattered; and in their distress, the shepherdess jumped from her rock in fright.
___A woman and man, both in light armor, leaped from thickets, into the path of the girl.
___"Gotcha now, my—aaaow!" yelped the man; the girl had smashed his head with her staff.
___"Pike, really, you are impossible," muttered the woman, who reached and snagged the girl by her hair. The shepherdess shrieked and flailed with her crook; but the woman walked, steadily pulling the girl off balance. "Long hair; bad idea my dear," she mused. "Then again—keep it. You may find it useful in other ways..."
___"Get a move-on!" snapped the sergeant to the others, who had paused in their chasing to watch and laugh. They returned to killing the scattering sheep.
___Seifas was already moving.
___The juacuar crept, outside the glade's wide edge, his belly low, his aasagai across his back. The girl might not be in danger, yet; surely the woman would remind them, Seifas thought, that they were men not beasts.
___Still, the girl would be the key. If he attacked immediately, they might attempt to use her against him. If they didn't take her, he would follow them to find their camp.
___If they did take the girl, then first he would kill her guards. Although he would spare the woman's life, if possible.
___Seifas was a soldier—and he was of the Hunting Cry. He knew all plans were uncertain; and no one knew more than the Guacu-ara how an uncertainty could lead to death.
___However well he planned his attack, he might be slain this afternoon—over a handful of sheep, and one poor girl.
___Still; a better reason to die, than any he'd recently had—or could reasonably hope to ever have again...
___"So, good friends!"
___Seifas froze, balanced on fingers and toes.
___He and the others stared with shared amazement as a fair-skinned, bearded man strode out of the trees.
___The man was dressed in simple clothes—though something about them itched the back of Seifas' mind—and he carried a flutewood stalk.
___This unexpected apparition calmly paced across the glade.
___"I see, young miss, the market has come to your family," chuckled the stranger. "Did they offer you fair price?"
___Even the girl had no idea, whether or how to answer! Not knowing what else to do himself, Seifas resumed his meticulous crawl around the clearing. Securing her freedom had now become more pressing—or, perhaps Macumza had sent help after all...?
___The sergeant tried some bluster: "Who're you?! And why're you here?!"
___"I am merely someone seeking service, like yourself," bowed the smiling man, solidly settling near a slaughtered sheep. "I think that covers both your questions admirably! May I ask the price you promised to her?"
___Seifas continued flicking glances back and forth between the glade and his chosen path, carefully picking obstacles out of his way.
___"None of yer business," growled the leader.
___Seifas could no longer see the stranger's face, but the man still sounded like he was smiling...
___"That tells me these sheep, and this young lady, are none of your business. If that is the case, and if she requires, then I am prepared to make it my business." He chuckled again, and gave a slight bow to the girl.
___Seifas would relive this moment, in his journal.
___In some ways, he would relive it the rest of his life:

___"I feel my heart pound—with emotion? No, more! Something I've lacked, for so many seasons, threatens to blind and to suffocate me!
___"It is hope.
___"I am snarling now, blinking away the tears my heart is crying. I will never live without hope—never again!
___"I will find the hope to have, or seek my death in finding it!!
___"I can see the girl; she doesn't dare to hope; she wants to dare to hope...My heart is bleeding—its scabs fall away!
___"I promise her: I will share the hope I find, or seek my death in sharing it!!"

___The soldiers didn't know of this doom, creeping toward them around the glade. They kept attending to the smiling stranger.
___"An admirer, eh?" the sergeant snickered. "What, no ladies your own age to play with, out here in the hind end of nowhere?" The other soldiers chortled.
___The woman whispered loudly to the frightened girl: "I'm sure you can do better than this peasant, my dear! In fact, I guarantee it: from these fellows here as well as their friends!"
___Seifas felt his fingers digging furrows in the ground.
___This woman, who would murder the hope of her common sister, would not escape him while he lived...
___The stranger shrugged his shoulders. "I can listen all day long to your baseless slander. Eventually, her family will wonder where she is. In any case, I think you soon will be facing someone far more wrathful than I!"
___"Well, then," retorted the sergeant, "we had better run away with our meal and our fun, if we want to live!"
___You cannot possibly run away quickly enough, Seifas assured him silently...
___"Come and stop us if you dare, you lone buffoon," the sergeant challenged. "Let us see that weed you carry parry steel! Clov, you get the sheep!" The youngest soldier began to move.
___"You will be quite embarrassed, if I brought some reinforcement," smiled the stranger.
___Seifas and Clov both jerked to a stop at this!—though Seifas instantly forced himself onward. Clov glanced around uncertainly.
___"Look at the girl," continued the stranger, "then at me, then at yourselves. Who doesn't belong?"
___Indeed, he looked as different from them as Seifas himself—although in an opposite fashion! Now, only one straight line through trees and brush divided the juacuar from his striking point...
___"So, I am not from the area; therefore, cannot be here to see the young lady; who certainly is—my apologies, miss—a little too young to be courting."
___Sweat ran down the sergeant's face. Was the stranger a scout for a squad? Or...was he perhaps a magus?
___Seifas could feel the sergeant breaking beneath the strain; and knew his time had run too short. He wouldn't be able to strike the first blow...
___"Clov!" the sergeant shouted. "Get the bloody sheep!"
___The brigands tensed themselves as Clov edged forward, twitching his eyes from tree to bush to rock. He paused at the body nearest the stranger, trying to think what to do.
___"I truly am sorry," the fair man said. "You know you shouldn't be taking that sheep."
___Clov looked back at his fellows.
___"Go on," the woman coldly ordered. "Let us see what happens."
___Clov stooped, and reached a hand.
___With a whistling crack, the flutewood snapped against his other wrist. The startled brigand reflexively dropped his sword.
___"Tsk," the stranger chided; then, whoop! as Clov dove forward from a crouch, attempting to grapple. The fair man spun, without much grace—the flutewood cracked through the air again, flatting the brigand's neck between his helmet and studded jacket. The soldier fell, unmoving.
___Seifas scurried, no longer worried about being heard.
___"Oh, well," the stranger sighed, as the sergeant and the third of the brigands launched themselves into action.
___The third man closed into striking range first. The stranger dodged his poorly-timed swipe by simply backstepping; then darted left and ahead, as the soldier swung a backstroke. But the stranger, inside the soldier's reach, blocked the stroke by raising the staff at a crossing angle.
___After a pausing thought, the fair man punched the brigand.
___A clever move for an amateur, Seifas thought: the stranger's hand had been held high to pull his staff on guard against the counterstrike—
___—but the brigand's bulky helmet blocked the still-clutched flutewood, keeping knuckles from meeting the nose!
___The fair man grunted; then flicked a finger into the eye of the brigand.
___The third man yelped and threw his hands to his face—punching himself with his own guard!
___The stranger's sudden dash a moment ago had put this man between himself and the sergeant. Now the two unwounded antagonists circled around the staggering third.
___The stranger now kept quiet. Seifas watched, unmoving, filled with curiosity. The fair man shifted grips on the pole, his pale face pursed in thought.
___Then with a grin, he glided in behind the central man, whirling his pole in a striking loop to harmlessly thump his enemy's chest.
___"Char take ya!" cursed the still-blinking man, lunging a countermove—right into his leader!
___"Fool! It's me!" the sergeant cried, and parried the strike. The stranger, rebounding the flutewood, pulled it around and thrust it over the middle brigand's shoulder. This creative gamble paid: the pole-tip pounded the sergeant, driving the nosebone deep in his skull.
___"Sarge!" the man in the middle screamed, as his officer sank to his knees.
___The stranger jumped back into a pre-lunge stance; and then, his hands neck-high, he thrust again—at the vulnerable gap between the vest and the helmet: snap!
___The last man shouted and finally leapt to attack from where he was guarding the girl—but:
___"Pike! Stop!" the woman barked. "Get back here!" The thin man yanked in his tracks; he backpedaled, twisting his face in rage. The stranger, who still was smiling, heartily twirled his weapon back to a hiking position, as he turned to face the guards.
___"Enough of this," the woman muttered; she jerked a knife from its sheath and held it out to the throat of the girl. ___"Drop that stick and submit to the mercy of Pike, here—or else she dies."
___Her tone was level and deadly.
___The smile of the stranger finally faded.
___"There will be little mercy," he said, "coming from your direction, I think."
___Indeed.
___A collapsed-carbon spike punched through the woman's knife-arm just above her wrist. Her hand popped open, dropping the knife, as the pick was yanked from her arm. Pike heard her gasp, and twitched his head in time to see a dark blur whirl in a three-quarter spin around the side of the woman. The blur became a blood-bespattered spectre—ebony-skinned, ivory-toothed, gripping a devilish tool, the sharpened pommel driven through bone, between her ear and eye.
___The woman wasn't even looking at her fiendish slayer; yet she dropped from the pommel-spike with infinite horror in her eyes...
___Pike tried to scream and turned to run.
___He couldn't run fast enough.

___"Afterward," Seifas would write, "we watched each other, black and white, at a cautious distance.
___"The girl had long since run away to find her father and family—I am afraid I frightened her.
___"But, I didn't frighten him.
___"I do believe I impressed him, though: he didn't smile at me, at first.
___"After a time, he spoke.
___"'Well,' he said.
___"'Well,' said I.
___"'All manner of things shall be well,' he murmured. The ghost of a smile appeared on his face.
___"'I am Seifas.' I did not add, 'of the Guacu-ara.' He wasn't blind.
___"'I am...' and he hesitated.
___"Then he said, 'Jian.' And smiled a little more.
___"'Well met, Jian.' I did not know the name. 'You carry yourself with honor.'
___"'I like to speak a little softly,' he said with a chuckle.
___"'Your stick won't last very long,' I warned. 'Perhaps I can find some steel for you.'
___"'Perhaps,' he agreed.
___"And then:
___"'Would you know someone willing to pay fair price for slaughtered sheep?'"


Skip JRP's comments and go to next chapter

[JasonPratt]

Note from the real author...

This ends the first 23 pages (or 20 pages of text more-or-less), traditionally regarded as the average length readers will give a book before deciding to continue or not. Semi-coincidentally, this is where I put the first major fight sequence!  8-) Also semi-coincidentally, the narrative switches back to (mostly) standard narrative form for the chapter: back long ago when I was first composing the book I had originally thought I would try a journalesque style of composition similar to Bram Stoker's Dracula, and this is when I realized, yeah, I just can't get that to work with some things, like action sequences. Not long afterward I decided I should avoid journal-entry chapters as much as possible anyway, but I'll include a few more in this first Section to help acclimatize readers to the concept.

In my very first draft, I didn't have a deer hunting scene in the Introduction, but a close friend wisely suggested I include something more tangible for readers as soon as possible. So despite obvious difficulties in getting readers through the first 20ish pages, I do at least include two action sequences. :)

(She also wisely suggested I get rid of the fictional authors, or at least the subauthors, but for longterm plot-structure purposes I can't get rid of the Preface Author, and if I have him I pretty much need some subauthors to give an idea of the material he's researching.)


"Jian" is supposed to sound like "jyahn" (i.e. John not quite in an English fashion), but since Seifas doesn't know the name this is how he (and other people) represent it phonetically in writing (then transliterated by the Preface Author). This will be made clear later in Book 3. I do also have the Korean/Chinese term "Jian" in mind, "master of all disciplines", but a careful reader will notice that Jian isn't exactly a master of combat (Seifas, the elite warrior, gauges him a clever amateur), so the term doesn't actually apply to him--another reason not to use the Oriental "YEE-ahn" pronunciation.

Yes, there's a nod to the maxims of Theodore Roosevelt and Lady Julian of Norwich at the end. I thought the combination was thematically appropriate; but readers shouldn't assume Jian knows the maxims himself. Fantasy/Sci-fi authors like to insert such nods on occasion because we think we're being clever. ;) (More charitably, some of us operate on the Universal Maxim rule: all good maxims crop up at least once in any world's history. :) )

I use more alliteration in CoJ than in later books; even in the final edit I was still trying to dial in just how "poetic" I wanted the narrative to sound at particular times. If I ever reprint, I'll likely go back and tag out some "blood-bespattered specters" and things of that sort. ;)