Weekend open thread

In the spirit of experimentation which led me to write my commentary posts only just before the actual post goes live, I’ve decided to try doing the weekend open thread posts a bit differently too. Being my place to soapbox and/or discuss all the interesting things I’ve seen or done through the course of the week, they have nevertheless been a bit sparse of late, and so I’ll be fiddling with them as the week goes onward instead of writing them all on Friday.

To kick us off, I was poking around TVtropes and came across a reference to Poul Anderson’s neat little piece Uncleftish Beholding, of which you’ve probably heard. I’ll therefore kick the description of it down to the following footnote[1]. As an aside, it was originally a goal of mine to try to do the same thing with my writing; it’s more difficult than it looks, so I gave up on it.

That’s not the interesting thing, though. Studying Russian as I am now (and German as I once was), I occasionally come across lamentations about how borrowings from English and other languages are ruining the purity of the tongue[2]. I’ve always taken it for granted that English speakers never really cared, and so of course I find an article on Wikipedia which proves me wrong. In reading about ‘inkhorn terms’, a pejorative name for borrowings from Greek and Latin (usually), I discovered that English has already had the debate. It’s just that we had it from about 1550 to 1650.

That’s only a marginally interesting sub-issue, though: more interesting are some of the words that those against imported words came up with. I do wish English had words like inwit (conscience), endsay (conclusion), yeartide (anniversary), and crosslikening speechlore (comparative linguistics).

Interesting stuff.

[1] It’s a description of basic atomic theory written using only words of Anglo-Saxon descent, except for a few which Anderson either forgot about or decided weren’t worth the trouble. Some other author whose name escapes me at the moment called it ‘Ander-Saxon’.
[2] German example. A bit tongue in cheek. I can offer no better Russian example than the verb гуглить (googlit’): to Google it.

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A Voice Beyond Her Years No. 5 – Provisional Admission

Anja made her way down through the tower with a spring in her step that could not be entirely explained by the gentle downward slope of the hallway. A smile kept forcing its way onto her face, and eventually she just let it stay there. She was genuinely happy for about the first time in seven months, and found herself poking bemusedly at the edges of the sensation, trying to get used to it again, and to shake the feeling that there was still another shoe to drop. She knew there wasn’t one, and she felt as though dawn was breaking at last after a very long night.

She beamed at the mages she passed, most of whom smiled back with an ever-so-slightly baffled air. She went a few steps past Hans’ door before she realized and danced back to it to knock. From beyond it, she heard a thump and a muffled curse, and a moment later Hans pulled the door open.

“What is it?” he asked, the worry etched onto his face melting away when he saw her expression. “It’s good news.”

Anja grinned. “I,” she said, twirling past him into the room, “am officially, by decree of the Septumvirate, aspirant to the Guild of Aeromancers.”

In hindsight, she should have expected the bear hug. “That’s wonderful!” he said. “Wonderful news!”

Her feet found the floor again, and she put her head against his chest. “Isn’t it? After so long, for it to be over so fast— are you crying?” she said, tilting her head to look up toward what had sounded like a sniffle.

Hans nodded, stepping back and running the back of his hand over his eyes. “It’s just that it ended so well for you,” he said, smiling through misty eyes. “There aren’t too many happy endings in the world, you know.”

There was more to it than that, Anja could tell, but she let it go and pushed the troubled feeling aside. “We’re lucky it happened to us,” she said. “I’m supposed to talk to Mikel Skräskyddsling about some things I have to do before I start studying. Some of it will probably apply to you, too.”

“Lead on,” said Hans.

Anja had no idea where to look, but the first mage she stopped in the hallway suggested she start with the courtyard. Anja and Hans descended through the tower, saying little. She still smiled brightly, eliciting the same sort of smile from the mages she turned her own on, and had all but forgotten her doubts about Hans’ truthfulness by the time they’d reached ground level.

They passed through the arched front doors, three times Anja’s height and standing wide open to let the sunlight in. Just outside Anja stopped, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the midday sun and blinking away the spots in her vision. “Bright,” she said good-naturedly, brow furrowing as she pulled her hand away. “Or dark inside.” Hans said nothing. She gave him a concerned look, which he didn’t seem to notice, and a bad feeling wormed its way back into the edge of her mind.

She spotted Mikel Skräskyddsling across the grassy circle between the tower and the wall, watching over two others who were fighting with staves. She set out toward him. As she neared, she was surprised to see that the fighters were Liam and Elisa. It was no static fight, either; they ducked, dove, circled, dodged, and struck too fast for Anja to follow. They seemed evenly matched.

Mikel Skräskyddsling watched with arms folded. He let the fight go on for a few moments more before he called, “Halt!”

Liam and Elisa raised their staves toward each other in salute, and then leaned on them and grinned, breathing hard as they turned to face Mikel.

“Well done,” he told them, then raising an eyebrow at Anja. “Good news?”

“They admitted me,” Anja replied. “By a four-three vote. You were right.”

A corner of Mikel’s mouth quirked upward. He leaned down as if telling a secret. “The only time they don’t vote four to three is when it’s a foregone conclusion.”

“Was there any magic there?” Anja said, nodding toward the other two students.

Liam looked to Mikel, who raised an eyebrow. The former explained, “Self-discipline, willpower, and unity of mind and body are three things you have to have before you can even begin to use magic safely and effectively. Training in a martial art develops them, and without the danger of starting with magic.” He finished reciting and became himself again, showing her a grin. “And congratulations.”

Elisa even managed a smile.

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A Voice Beyond Her Years No. 4 – Duties To Attend To

“You are to be granted provisional admission.”

Anja let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, and anger at Ansgar Leifsson’s incongruous displeasure and relief at the Septumvirate’s decision fought a brief battle before the latter won out. “To me,” she said, “that sounds like good news.”

Ansgar grunted. “Three of us think we went too far, three of us think we didn’t go far enough, and one of us is—”

“—a firm believer in caution,” said another of the Septumvirate.

“A firm believer in half measures,” Ansgar retorted.

Anja felt the tension in the room. It reminded her of home—but now wasn’t the time for that, she reminded herself. “Provisional in what way?” she said.

For a moment, there was silence. The firm believer in caution cleared his throat and answered. “The exact nature of the control you have over the draug and your obvious raw potential suggest you may be dangerous. In—”

Another member of the Septumvirate interrupted. “Only if you’re willing to discard the last four years of theoretical study of—”

“Guesses on a lattice of assumptions,” the cautious one said. “To be perfectly honest, Anja Grevdarsdottir, as far as our archivist can tell your case is the first of its kind. Some of my colleagues hold the opinion that there is value in attempting to reason about the aspect of our world least governed by any logical set of rules, where I would say that the only way to be sure of things is trial, and safeguards must be taken against the inevitable error.”

Anja nodded, a neutral gesture to cover her growing wonder that a body such as this ever accomplished anything.

“Where was I,” the cautious one said to himself. “Ah, yes. In light of the uncertainty which undeniably—” a cheap shot, thought Anja “—surrounds your suitability as a mage, you are to be Restricted when outside the direct supervision of your masters.”

Anja could practically hear the capital letter. “Restricted?” she prompted.

“Hamstrung,” Ansgar said darkly. “You’ll be made to wear a talisman that will sever your access to magic.”

“For your own safety,” insisted the cautious one.

They descended into petty bickering. Anja tuned them out and turned things over in her mind. She was beginning to find the Septumvirate disagreeable company in general, but if she had to choose she admitted she would side with the cautious one. Better to be restrained—or Restricted, if they preferred—than to hurt bystanders. You’ve done enough of that, a part of her reminded her sharply. She drew her eyebrows together and silenced it, and letting her expression clear she addressed the Septumvirate. “I accept.”

Ansgar and the cautious one stopped their sniping—or more likely, Anja thought, put it off until later—and the former said, “Well, child, there was never any doubt of that.” His tone softened, and yet at the same time grew more officious. “Speaking for the Septumvirate, it is my great honor to welcome you to the Guild of Aeromancers.” There was a beat, and all seven of them pushed their hoods back at once. Every one but Ansgar wore looks of studied lack of feeling. Ansgar smiled. “As of this moment, you, by taking the mantle of the Aspirant, do agree to abide by the Code as laid out by the Council of the Guilds and Twelve Assembled, and further to dedicate yourself wholly and completely to the mastery of the magical arts.” The officiousness vanished, and took with it Anja’s sense that Ansgar was reciting from memory. It was replaced with a measure of warmth. “You don’t have to say anything, and in fact there’s nothing for you to say. You belong to the Guild now. You’ve chosen a path that is certainly difficult, but in the long run very rewarding. I look forward to watching your progress.”

Anja lowered her gaze deferentially. Ansgar leaned back in his chair, resting an elbow on the armrest and continuing. “For the time being we’ll commend you to the instruction of Mikel Skräskyddsling. Given it was he who started all this, there’s a pleasant symmetry in letting him continue it. There are a few matters you’ll need to attend to before you begin your studies in earnest, but we’ll allow Master Skräskyddsling to give you the details.”

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Commentary, A Voice Beyond Her Years No. 4

Another entry wherein only one important thing happens.

I am struck by how quickly this fall is flying by. It’s kind of disturbing. It feels like it was the beginning of September last week, and now it’s already October and the time at which I’ll need to have the rest of the current chapters written is rapidly approaching.

On top of that, I’ll be back home before I know it—after this week, things pick up speed again, and before I know it I’ll only have a month left in the great city of St. Petersburg. This too is disturbing: I’m meeting a bunch of people that, realistically, I realize I’ll be lucky to see again after we’re all home.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I myself wrote that we make our own luck, I guess. Here’s to that beautiful idea, and the hope that it’s one of those ones that works out in practice.

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Weekend open thread

Here we are again: a weekend!

If my stats page is to be believed someone is going through the archives, unless it’s my regular playing a trick on me. Supposing you’re new here, I now address myself to you. Hello! I hope you’re enjoying yourself so far. According to my list-o-referrers, list-o-hits, and colander-like memory, you’re the first person who’s come from TVtropes and stayed around for more than one entry. That probably speaks pretty poorly of me[1], doesn’t it? Maybe I’ll move on to something else.

There isn’t all that much else to move on to. I’m reading through Kim Stanley Robinson’s epic[2] Red Mars now, and while it’s engaging, I feel like in some hypothetical world where I’m notable enough to talk to Mr. Robinson, we would get into a blazing row over politics and ecology[3], but I’m under no pretensions about either my notable or the general political bent of the Internet, so I won’t say any more about that.

Last night I sat down and wrote a few hundred words for the first time in a while. I’m gratified to say that there wasn’t as much rust to knock off as I’d been fearing. I’m on track to have everything done at the time it needs to be done; writing the last entry or two for each chapter shouldn’t take long. I was going to say why I feel that way, but I’m trying to avoid spoilering things in this space.

I guess that’s all for now.

[1] Self-deprecation!
[2] Noun here, not adjective.
[3] So far he’s proving to be a masterful writer of psychologically plausible characters, though, which is currently the main draw.

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Never Alone No. 4 – The Obvious Choice

“Clearly, it worked,” Alvarsson prompted.

“Yes. I didn’t expect it to go as smoothly as it did,” said Eirik. “Lord Andersson’s retinue made us a camp, and I began to work. Between restoring her body and returning her spirit to it, it was about a day’s worth of work. Yes?”

Baltasar had been endeavoring to put a word in, and he leaped at the opening. “Did it seem out of the ordinary in any way?”

Eirik resisted the urge to sigh. He’d meant the chance for a question as an olive branch, and in typical fashion Baltasar had taken it, lit it on fire, and heaved it back by asking a question which did nothing beyond highlight Eirik’s lack of experience. “I have nothing to compare it to,” he said. “It was the first time I’d ever done a human.” Baltasar sat back with a self-satisfied smile. Eirik ignored him and pressed on. “I understand I slept for two days after I finished. Two of Lord Andersson’s men had taken me back to Joarsgard, while he, his daughter, and the rest of his men and the mages went on to Jötunberg to destroy the draug. When the girl woke up, she told them they didn’t have to worry. They didn’t believe her, of course, but when they reached the town they couldn’t find the draug, or even any imprint on the Weave to suggest it might have been there.

“Regardless, the girl and I were never conscious in the same place, and I heard no more of it until I arrived here this morning.”

“You made no attempt to speak with her spirit?” Alvarsson asked.

Eirik shook his head. “Some of those who passed through Joarsgard were dead when they arrived. It was my experience when I was preparing them for travel that a dead man’s spirit never has anything useful to say.”

“I see.”

There were further questions, increasingly technical and tedious, but finally they dismissed Eirik, and he returned to his seat with a deep sense of relief. Book had done well, and with its guidance Eirik hadn’t put a single foot wrong. Certainly, his questioners had done all they could to point out flaws in his actions, but he was cautiously optimistic, and as he turned the interrogation over in his head he couldn’t see a way to make it look like he was guilty of anything serious.

Several more mages took the floor, talking about Hans Georgsson’s letter and what had happened after it arrived, and it very quickly became clear that nobody had a complete picture of how the politics had played out. The Assembly spent a few hours putting one together, and as the sun set Eirik saw he was not the only one yawning.

It seemed that, for better or for worse, they would be finishing that night. Nobody moved to adjourn, and as the debate shifted to the question of admissions that had sparked the whole thing, the servants unobtrusively brought food around. Eirik had a full meal while most of the others opted for little more than tea and bread, but all of them were paying very close attention. Eirik, on the other hand, had already made his decision to vote with Alvarsson’s side, and doubted that anything Baltasar said could change his mind.

That didn’t make Baltasar any less impressive to watch during his closing argument, though. He paced back and forth, thundering and railing, gesturing grandly. He played the Assembly like a fiddle, and managed to make his point well in the middle of it. Reynir Alvarsson took the floor to a crowd buzzing with growing hostility.

He waited for silence, and then began to speak in even, measured tones. he lacked Baltasar’s fire, but every word he used had purpose, and that purpose was to comprehensively disassemble every facet of Baltasar’s argument. If the girl was dangerous, then it had to be admitted that she herself was in endangered by magic, and if that was the case, he said, the Guild had a duty to protect her, a duty spelled out in its charter. With a few final words to emphasize that point, he returned to his chair.

There was the requisite bickering before the Assembly could agree on a simple up-or-down vote, and Eirik guessed it would have taken longer if the night had been younger. The servants began to tally the votes, and half an hour later, one of them passed a slip of paper to Reynir Alvarsson.

He smiled and handed the paper back. “I am pleased to announce that the Guild of Aendemancers will be offering admission to Anja Grevdarsdottir.”

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Commentary, Never Alone No. 4

Over the weekend I said we might get to 1000 total hits this week. I am pleased to announce that I was completely wrong; this has been the slowest week since mid-June, and we’ll be lucky to get to 975 at this rate.

That’s life, though, and it’s not as if I care how many people actually read this[1].

[1] I say, huddled over my keyboard, obsessively refreshing the stats page and hoping against all hopes that someone will come and read the whole archive…[2]
[2] This is a joke. I never huddle; good posture is important.

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Never Alone No. 3 – Where To Start

“The beginning?” Baltasar suggested.

Alvarsson was a bit more helpful. “With what you were doing to bring yourself in contact with the girl.”

Eirik inclined his head a fraction. “At the request of the Guild, I was in Joarsgard for last winter’s campaigns. We hadn’t a presence on the western front the winter before, and after a number of mages were lost on the way here for treatment, the Council lodged a complaint. The Guild directed me to provide treatment—”

“Excuse my interrupting,” Alvarsson said. “For the sake of clarity, I have to ask—by treatment you mean healing but not resurrections, correct?”

“Yes,” Eirik said through gritted teeth. That was a detail he’d been hoping to gloss over. “I was to provide treatment to mages and high-ranking members of the military. The first few months were very busy. You might remember that the western army had a rough time of it breaking the hiisi lines; the rumors were right for once.”

He waved a hand and a map appeared in the air beside him, slightly transparent, showing the area between the Heimdal and the and the Syderflod. Some two hundred fifty miles separated the western headwaters of each river, and a hundred more when they reached the sea. The space in between was occupied by a forest, vaguely liver-shaped, and a range of hills descending from the peaks of Hieran’s Wall to the west. Colored blocks chased each other around as Eirik spoke. “There was some back and forth after that, but by the new year the salients in the west and the east had come together.”

He let the map fade. “It was around that time that I encountered Anja Grevdarsdottir. The campaign had moved far enough away that I had little do to, compared to the earlier months of the winter. On the eighteenth day of the thirteenth month, a courier arrived at Joarsgard and told us of the draug at Jötunberg. Most of the mages had followed the army south, but we were able to find six—myself and five others—with the necessary skills to fight. We set out to the north—”

“Abandoning your post?” Alvarsson asked.

“Only in the very strictest sense. I hadn’t been sitting on my hands—thanks to the conjurers in Jötunberg, I was able to stockpile about a month’s worth of talismans of healing, and even after we left there were mages enough in Joarsgard who knew how to use them. In no way was I abandoning my responsibilities.”

Alvarsson nodded. “Go on.”

“We set out to the north, but before we reached Jötunberg we came across the sleigh of Grevdar Andersson der Danniksskraj himself. He had been heading for Joarsgard to find an aendemancer, and he had his daughter’s body with him. She had been killed by crossbow bolts here and here—” he indicated his shoulder and his stomach “—and, by my judgment, had been dead for almost a tenday at that point. Her father insisted I bring her back, even after I told him the price and gave him the usual warnings.”

“Which would those be?” Alvarsson said. “The usual warnings, that is.”

“That exposure to magic changes people, that she might not be the same as he remembered her, and after a tenday her spirit might be too far gone to find. I needn’t have worried about the last one. She was right there, and the conjurer with us concurred that we weren’t in any danger of losing her in the next day or so. Knowing the risks, I was still hesitant to start. I called the other mages together and asked their opinions; they unanimously agreed that, given that we had been going to fight a draug anyway, they could handle whatever the girl might become if I were to make a mistake.”

“Did you think so too?” Alvarsson asked.

“I did.”

“What do you think now?”

“I’m not so sure,” Eirik admitted. “At the time, though, it was obvious what I had to do. I had a father, mad with grief, begging me to save his daughter, and five solid mages to stand with me if things went wrong. I had to try.”

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Commentary, Never Alone No. 3

As an experiment, I’m going to be doing the commentary for all of October’s posts after I do my final proofread.

You can expect that some of them will be late, miscategorized, or unintelligible, and possibly all three.

As for today’s post, more talking! Hooray! Later this month is my birthday (on a Wednesday), and my two favorite entries bookend it. If you’re tired of this you might like those more.

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