Paksworld

31 days (or 30 by the time most of you see this) and thus time for a snippet.   In fact, a snippet from the very beginning of Kings of the North.   I don’ t think, this close to release, that it’s going to be spoilerific for anyone.

Location:  Lyonya, in the King’s Grove

POV:  Kieri

Falkieri Artfielan Phelan, King of Lyonya, waited with barely concealed impatience for his grandmother, the elven queen of the Ladysforest, to appear for the Midsummer ritual.  Under his bare feet, the moss of the King’s Grove felt cool and welcoming; the fragrance of the summer night, flowers that bloomed no other time, filled his nostrils.  Yet he could not take full pleasure in the soft breeze, the cool moss, the sweet scents.  Where was she?

He had spent the entire short night on the central mound near the Oathstone, expecting the Lady to appear, but she had neither granted his request to come early, nor sent a clear refusal.  He had hoped to use this auspicious day to ask her once again for help with his continuing effort to reconcile the two peoples, elves and humans…but since his coronation, she had come seldom, and never for long.  The whole night she had been elsewhere, and not even his growing taig sense could find the direction.

………………………………………………

Joint rulership is always difficult.   When I first thought of the joint kingdom of Lyonya, elf and human joined together,  I wasn’t really clear on how it worked.  Or didn’t.    That was something over a quarter century ago, and I may have been more optimistic or naive or otherwise unaware of just what was happening under the surface.

And yet the seeds of what’s growing in the new books were planted in the old.    Coming to the story again later, with a lot of life and experience in between, I spotted those seeds…or rather, those sprouts, brave little cotyledons sticking up into the sunlight.  Brave little cotyledons can be growing from plants you don’t want, as well as from plants you do.   These grew from trouble.

Still a mystery in Book IV, two books down the line from this, is what, exactly, was done or not done, and who, exactly did or did not do it.   I think that will be clear by the end of Book IV, but I’m 68,000+ words into it and still don’t have it all worked out.   Old secrets,   buried very deep with great determination…and yet, like a dead rat under the floor, the bad smell of evil eventually comes out where it can be detected.  Though the harm may already be done.