The Sword of Bheleu (28 page)

Appendix C

The Histories of Garth of Ordunin, Written and Unwritten:

The original 1974 plan for the Garth series was for twelve stories, ranging from 3,300 words (“The Dragon of Orgûl”) to novel length (
The Lady in the Jewel).
In chronological order, they were to have been:

1. “The Master of Mormoreth”

2. “City of the Seven Temples”

3.
The Lady in the Jewel

4. “The Scepter of Dor”

5. “The Eyes of Kewerro”

6. “The Dragon of Orgûl”

7. “The Decision of the Council”

8. “The Fall of Fortress Lagur”

9. “Skelleth”

10. “Return to Dûsarra”

11. “The Jungle by Night”

12. “The Last Quest”

“The Master of Mormoreth” was to start with a prologue explaining the series premise, and “The Last Quest” would end with an epilogue wrapping the whole thing up. The theory was that these could eventually be gathered into two volumes—a collection and a novel. Or possibly, if they ran longer than expected, two collections and a novel.

All the stories except “Skelleth” and “Return to Dûsarra” were begun; four of the first six were completed, but never published.

In 1975 or early ‘76 the plan was modified slightly—”The Decision of the Council,” “The Fall of Fortress Lagur,” and “Skelleth” were to be combined into a novel called
The Decision of the Council.

In 1976 I decided that I should focus on novels, and the list was revised again, becoming primarily a series of novels. The first,
The Overman and the Basilisk,
incorporated “The Master of Mormoreth,” but expanded and extended the story, and was completed in 1978. The other novels were left unwritten until the first sold.

In 1979
The Overman and the Basilisk
sold and was retitled
The Lure of the Basilisk,
and the series was continued, now planned as five volumes:

1.
The Lure of the Basilisk

2.
The City of Seven Temples

3.
The Eyes of Kewerro & Other Stories
(short story collection)

4.
The Decision of the Council

5.
The Last Quest

The Lady in the Jewel was dropped from the series as no longer really fitting in properly; the possibility of inserting it somewhere later was kept open.

The proposed novel version of
The Last Quest
would combine “Return to Dûsarra” and “The Last Quest.”

The second novel,
The City of Seven Temples,
was written, expanding the 12,000-word novelet “City of the Seven Temples.” Lester del Rey was not satisfied with it, and felt that it was too slow in getting to any sort of action or magic, so it was extensively revised, incorporating a piece of “The Eyes of Kewerro” into an early portion of the novel, resulting in
The Seven Altars of Dûsarra.

That also resulted in rethinking some of the series structure, since there were loose ends in
The Seven Altars of Dûsarra
that were to be tied up in
The Decision of the Council,
and waiting an entire volume to address them seemed to be a mistake. Besides, the intended title story of the collection had been cannibalized and was therefore no longer available.

The revised plan was this:

1.
The Lure of the Basilisk

2.
The Seven Altars of Dûsarra

3.
The Decision of the Council

4.
The Dragon of Orgûl & Other Stories
(short story collection)

5.
The Last Quest

The Decision of the Council
was written in 1981, and retitled
The Sword of Bheleu.
Its resemblance to the original fragment from 1975 was very faint, and although much of the intended plot of “Skelleth” did wind up incorporated into it, virtually no trace of “The Fall of Fortress Lagur” remained. In fact, by that point I think I'd forgotten “Fall” had ever existed, though one or two minor elements survived.

And after that was done, I looked at what I had left to work with, looked at the short fantasy markets, thought about how the series had developed, and decided that the only short story I still cared about at all was “The Dragon of Orgûl,” which could hardly be a fourth volume all by itself.

So it was expanded into the first four and a half chapters of
The Last Quest,
which was retitled
The Book of Silence,
and the series was completed in four volumes, rather than five.

The astute observer will have noticed that this means the following stories were not included anywhere in the final version:
The Lady in the Jewel,
“The Scepter of Dor,” “The Fall of Fortress Lagur,” “The Jungle by Night,” and a fraction of “The Eyes of Kewerro.”

“The Fall of Fortress Lagur” and “Eyes of Kewerro” could still have fit into the series reasonably well; the other three just didn't belong in Garth's adventures as they eventually developed. I may yet re-use some of the premises, though.

Here are quick summaries:

The Lady in the Jewel
: The Forgotten King wants a sorceress named Sharatha, who rules the city of Ilnan, removed from the world. Garth initially assumes that this means she must be killed, but learns that in fact she is from another universe, a world inside a magical gem, and was exiled to Garth's world by her enemies. He agrees to escort her home, but finds himself entangled in the same web of feuds and power struggles that caused her exile in the first place.

The link to the main story arc of the series was to be that the Forgotten King could not carry out his plans for Garth's world as long as beings from other worlds lived in it; thus, he demanded that Sharatha be removed.

“The Scepter of Dor”: The Forgotten King wants a magical scepter that's in the possession of Dor, Lord of Therin. Dor has no intention of giving it up while alive, and Garth discovers that Dor is very hard to kill—he has multiple bodies sharing his consciousness.

“The Fall of Fortress Lagur”: The heavily-fortified port city of Lagur, Ordunin's major trading partner, is one of the magical keystones holding Garth's world safe; the Forgotten King wants it destroyed, so Garth raises an army of overmen to attack it. Frankly, I think I abandoned this one because it was such a boring premise. Another fantasy siege—big deal.

“The Jungle by Night”: Garth is passing through the jungles of Yesh, far to the south of Eramma, on an errand for the Forgotten King, and trespasses on the tribal lands of the Kikoru, who decide that an overman's hide would make a good trophy. The Kikoru are fierce, and the tribe's shaman is a formidable wizard, so the result is an impressively bloody sword-and-sorcery battle. This one had some nice cultural details for the Kikoru, but was very short on actual plot.

“The Eyes of Kewerro”: Kewerro is the Arkhein god of the wind. In order to locate certain items the Forgotten King wants the Eyes of Kewerro, magical gems that allow their owner to see anything, anywhere in the world, that's touched by the wind. These gems are sealed in a tomb on the uninhabited polar continent, and Garth fights his way through various menaces in order to rob the tomb. About half of these menaces wound up guarding the village of Weideth in chapters 4 and 5 of
The Seven Altars of Dûsarra.

And that was the whole thing as originally planned back in 1974.

Later on, as the series developed, a couple of other possibilities emerged—novels I might yet write someday, though I'm not planning to any time soon.

First, there's
A Handful of Gold.
Early in
The Lure of the Basilisk
Garth, ignorant of how highly humans value gold, grossly overpays a stable-boy. Later on it's mentioned that the stable-boy used that gold to buy a share in a caravan headed south. At one point I desperately wanted to tell the tale of that boy's adventures as he makes his way to Kholis, seeking his fortune, while Garth's actions are altering the familiar world around him. I never found the time for it, and eventually the enthusiasm faded.

And second, I have never ruled out the possibility of sequels, describing Garth's adventures (and Frima's—she's a character introduced in
The Seven Altars of Dûsarra)
after the end of
The Book of Silence.
I plotted two of these, but then got busy with other projects and never wrote them, or seriously proposed them to a publisher. One would have been called
Skelleth,
and would have concerned control of that increasingly-important town; it would not be the same as the never-written ninth story in the original series outline.

The other sequel's title is a spoiler for the ending of
The Book of Silence,
so I won't mention it here, and it would have been about certain people seeking vengeance on Garth for events in the first four books. I could have written these two sequels in either order, since the outlines were still vague.

Every so often readers ask me if I'm planning to write any more about Garth or his world, and the answer is no, I'm not
planning
it, but it might happen someday.

And that's all there is to the series.

—Lawrence Watt-Evans

About the Author

Lawrence Watt-Evans is the author of more than two dozen novels, and more than a hundred short stories. Further information can be found on his webpage at www.watt-evans.com/.