The Book of Silence
Page 37
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. It would have included a role reversal—Frima would have been the protagonist, and Garth her sidekick.
The other sequel was to be called After the Gods Died, 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. Thank you, dear reader, for keeping it alive.
—Lawrence Watt-Evans
About the Author
Lawrence Watt-Evans is the author of more than two dozen novels, more than a hundred short stories, and assorted other works. Further information can be found on his webpage at www.watt-evans.com/.