liam_rta

Friends left in a cloud of Awesome to go find previous King: check.
Cousin I liked tossed out of Chantris for being tainted: check.
Alone in a great big Palace full of rampaging Benedicts: check.

I promised Aunt Beatrice I would not slink off to Ashe Cairne or, worse, my Dad's cottage for a week or so to get out of the way but it is getting damn tempting.

"The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live." ~ Victor Hugo

Ashe Cairne came with a small staff, a boat launch off a rocky beach, and a small Scottish Terrier-like breed of dog named Ivan the Terrible. I spent an hour looking for the dog under the hair and I have yet to discover why the dog is nicknamed "the Terrible" although the implications for me and my shoes fills my heart (and my shoes) with horror.

The house is very "Adirondack Hunting Lodge" combined with "Wealthy Nautical." The previous owner was an avid hunter and he (although I shan't presume he) mounted a particularly large stuffed moose head on the wall over the main sitting room. It stares down at me through black beady moosy stuffed eyes beneath enormous stuffed moosy eyebrows and judges me on all my sins. I don't go in for death as a decor palette so I do not think Mr. Moose will last in his disembodied perch over the main sitting room but I would hate to remove him from his place of judgment so I am torn on the ultimate fate of the mounted moose.

The house still has three square feet less book space than Pippins Cottage. I measured. Twice. The moose head can go and be replaced by bookshelf space. The books need to live! And breathe! And I cannot allow my Dad to win in the race to be buried under the biggest mountain of books.

I do need to head back to Amber, though, although I've made myself comfortable here. Luckily it's not much of a ride into the city. And I will. After a nap and a re-reading of The Count of Monte Cristo. It's a book of fiction and not an instructional manual on planning overly-elaborate revenge for wrongs both perceived and real! Honestly!

After the hoopla of the next several days settles down, I am going to pack my bag and go to Ashe Cairne for a few days and try to convert Drama and Angst into Productivity. I should hang around to make an appearance and be supportive -- and put on better pants -- but after that it is time to step away.

When I come back, I don't really know. Yet Another Court I'm out of favor with. I guess we'll start taking a look at the Tanus Shadowpath.

I hear you don't like Chaos. Why is that?

I'm totally not into this year's fad. I know I'm being unfashionable but I'm going to wait until this one goes and the next one comes in. I'm hoping it's purple!

I love books. I live in and around and with books. I don't see how something designed to break down order and turn it into whatever is compatible with the fundamental structure of the novel. The ending first! Forget dramatic tension! We don't even need verbs! Fly little words, fly! Be free! All books shall turn into Finnegan's Wake!

And that's not even the physical structure of the book. I'm a big fan of pages going in order instead of going in whatever order the pages themselves want to be in. I like the narrative to be comprehensible. And in an actual language.

I'm holding out for purple. I look good in purple.

You're not a fan of Order right, correct?

Have you ever gotten into an argument with my Dad over the utility of the split infinitive rule? He's utterly pedantic on the topic. It's insane. He believes splitting the infinitive is cause for a beating. (But luckily he's slow and I can run fast.)

I don't see how having the words lining up in tiny little perfect orderly rows with rigidly enforced grammatical rules is any better than the words and pages arranging themselves into whatever order they feel natural in. Words need a flow and a style, and that is not always compatible with putting little letters and words into a perfect brilliant matrix.

Again, purple. I have this purple doublet with slashed sleeves revealing white silk all picked out.

What is your opinion on the current political situation?

Can I take the fifth?

The fifth what?

The fifth of anything. The fifth of whiskey. The fifth of a doughnut.

I prefer to be the observer and not the observed. Right now I am firmly in the observer category. Drama is great fun when it happens to someone else, and I am fully drama-powered. Without drama I am nothing! But I prefer the drama not to happen to me or where I sleep. Drama needs to happen over... there and this is coming way too close for comfort.

It's great grist from the writer's mill. I am taking copious notes.

You're now the Baronet of Ashe Cairne. How is that working out for you?

I have my very own title! Sure it's a little tiny one and it comes only with a house on a rocky beach but it is mine and I am no longer some vague 'Lord.' The house has a stable for Rutabaga and a small dock for the Carrot and it is 112 square feet larger than my Dad's cottage! It has a tiny staff! I love it. I'm thrilled beyond words. I'll be moving my typewriter and pens and notebooks in post haste.

However, my Dad has 3 sq. ft. more bookshelf space and this must be rectified. This must not stand! I am shaking my fist!

Also, parties. This party will be very pro-Niklas Shadowdancer not wearing a shirt.

It's great! It's a little ride into the city but it's great! House!

In which a castle is restored through the help of Strange Men from Shadow, refugees from New Lyonesse and Malachi's men, a Tapestry is Hung, a Feast is Gathered, a King is Crowned, and a Skald Tells a Tale.

Note: This is the completion of the full Lyonesse Shadowpath Packet which comprised 5 research sections and 10 TP sections for an ungodly amount of focus. Thank you to all who participated in this plot -- Dominic, Malachi, Lucius, Niklas, Celeste, Deirdre and Einkil! The Heroes of Amber will be immortalized in the Songs of the Skald!

( Malachi discreetly pretends not to be related to Liam every time he walks through the hall. )

Liam Chantris takes a stroll through Fiamme Chantris's dream and contemplates her dreamscape. He sees a cousin standing on the teetering edge of madness and edging toward falling in. He holds his hand out to her but the madness clings like butterflies in her hair.

Note: This is Fiamme's dream. All people and places are filtered through Fiamme's subconscious.

Also, the poem is the first 12 lines of Lord Byron's "Darkness." The full poem can be found here.

( I had a dream, which was not all a dream... )

My nephew's name was Avril.

I'm not sure what he was doing in Rebma but he was in a fancy gambling house down the street when the earthquake hit. Even the blood of our forebears could not save him from several tons of brick and mortar collapsing on his head. My brother Phaedrus is a terrible man and a worse father. He never did well by any of his sons and Meiriona would not let them in the house.

Avril died in the Horror. I cannot wrap my mind around it. It is just the Horror.

Rebma is shell-shocked. The city is full of the living, walking dead. Everyone lost someone -- a son, a daughter, a parent, a grandparent, a friend. The city was attacked from without. They lost something. Some part of themselves. They have a hole where something once was.

I sat out in a cafe near House Dafydd, ate sushi and looked at all the Rebman flags drifting slowly back and forth in the tide. Everyone has a flag. I didn't know Rebma had so many flags. Small children have flags. Flags are in every window of every standing building.

Hell, even I have a flag now. Because my nephew's name was Avril and he's dead.

If that deep ache you get in your legs from spending too many hours in a museum is called "museum leg," what is that feeling you get when you have sat at too many literary readings? "Literature Butt?"

Because "literature butt" may be the deep forbidden curse of House Chantris.

Celeste de'Mandrake wondered the other day why I was so calm and not freaking out. And maybe I am freaking out... how could you tell? Maybe a Liam freakout looks the same as a non-Liam freakout? Maybe the Rare Liam is always in a state of vague panic and new panic looks like old panic? More likely the Rare Liam sings the Doom Song but accepts the Doom when it comes for it is Doom of the Doomiest Sort.

Doom doom doom.

Panicking and wallowing in misery about things I cannot control or change is a waste of time and valuable emotion. Blowing it on coffee talk or panic attacks is worthless. I can take the confusion and frustration and rage and anger and hate and ball it up inside until it wants to rip me apart and then write. Emotion makes the pen go.

Last night it tipped me over the side, though. Visual confirmation of four-cornered time is enough to drive even the most insane poet mad. I ended up, somehow, sleeping on a couch in a strange room with an enormous dog and a bottle of whiskey. How I got there and what I was doing at the time are both interesting questions. I don't think I want the answers. I apologize to everyone I may have spoken to in my embarrassingly inebriated state!

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',
I saw a white tower all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

- Bob Dylan, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"

My Dad was here in town for the Funerary Ablations of the Great and Powerful Ex-Duke of Chantris and while he was here he gave me an early release copy of his great Magnum Opus. He has since slunk off to Pippins Cottage leaving me with a dubious review copy of A Guide to Thari Modern Usage with the opening remarks written in eye-meltingly 6-point typeset font requiring a magnifying glass or an extremely unattractive pair of glasses, neither which I will reduce myself to wearing.

To the outside observer AGTMU is merely a desktop reference text to grammatical usage of written Thari. To a learned observer it is the opening salvo in an inter-family feud between elder Chantrises. It puts his stake in the ground on where he stands on something more fundamental than literary criticism or library sciences; in the opening my Dad claims ground in the eternal argument on the formation and inclusion of rules in the language itself. Arguments which can only be won by shouting! Loudly!

I fear the seedy underbelly of Chantris lexicography. It leads to angry old people tottering up to greens while leaning on walking sticks to fight dictionary duels. That, I contend, is too strange to survive.

I am formulating a weak dodge. "I was too busy sleeping to read your analysis, Dad," perhaps. Or, "I had to go wash my hair."

In which Liam tells a small story about his past about boys, literature, and a duel he once won. There is very little kissing.

( Audiences know what they expect and that is all they are prepared to believe in. )

Her Royal Highness Princess Deirdre is having visions urging her on to Lyonesse. Her son Liam, meanwhile, has been in the Amber Palace library searching for connections to another of the five Lyonesse Shadowpath nodes. When he discovers something of note, they decide to check on Liam's possible finding on the way to Lyonesse proper.

They rent a small merchant vessel, the single-masted 40' cutter named the CARROT, and they sail off into Shadow to find a place most inhospitable to life. There, they find artifacts of the Once Mighty King Oberon and an unpleasant truth.

( Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day that our last king overcame Fortinbras... )