This Blog Is Not Defunct! A Preview of the Sequel to the Ki'shto'ba Series

      

The Launch of Mor'gwai on the
Quest for the Golden Fungus
at the beginning of v.6.
(click for larger view)

Actually, I'm not defunct either.  I simply lost interest in a lot of things after being diagnosed with uterine cancer and having to go about preparing and enduring surgery (hysterectomy).  Recovery wasn't as fast as I expected.  Fortunately, the cancer hadn't spread, but I'm still going to have to take a preventive round of chemotherapy, which doesn't make me very happy.

 

       However, I'm back to attempting to write a little bit everyday on the sequel volume to The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  This post should be over on the Termitespeaker blog, but at least I've been posting reviews over there, so I'm putting this excerpt here.  I can't talk a lot about the new book because that would inevitably give away the events of v.6, The Revenge of the Dead Enemy.  However, the following excerpt doesn't do that.  It includes my interpretation of Cadmus and the dragon's teeth in Greek myth.  If you've read v.6, you know something like this was foretold by the Seer Ko'zim'tuk'zei.  In this excerpt, a tattered old Seer/Sorcerer has just given Is'a'pai'a a bag of reptile teeth - and she has a tale to go with it.

 

       “Mighty Captain-Leader, once long ago there are fortresses in all the great lands of the South, ruled by a great Champion named Pai’grin’a [Warrior (of the) East].  In those parts it is the custom to seek out holy springs and bring water to the fortress to bathe the Mothers at certain festivals.  A Seer tells Pai’grin’a to go to a particular spring for the rites of lat’nol|, but when it gets there, it finds an enormous reptile guarding the spring. ...

       “This reptile kills many of Pai’grin’a’s guards, but the Champion will not give up and fights long and hard.  Finally the reptile says to it, ‘Yield to me, Warrior fool.  You cannot kill me!  I am sacred to the War King!’

       “But Pai’grin’a does not yield.  ‘This water must be taken to the Mother, and if I return without it, I am disgraced and as good as dead anyway.’  And it fought on.

       “Finally it senses that the reptile is weakening and it picks up a huge boulder and bashes the reptile’s head.  ‘Ai-i-i, now you kill me!  You are the mightiest of Champions, and so before I die, I will give you a gift.  Cut off my head and pull out my teeth, and sow them in the soil as if you were planting the fungus spores or the seeds of fruit trees, and I promise you a great wonder will result.’  And the reptile expires with a great thrashing that in itself almost kills Pai’grin’a.

       “Pai’grin’a’s companions advise it not to accept the reptile’s gift, because such creatures are notorious for their devious natures.  But Pai’grin’a, swelled up with its own prowess, scoffs at his companions for being weakling cowards, and it pulls the many many teeth and sows them as if they were the seeds of fruit trees.  And immediately the ground begins to heave and then it opens up and out leap burly, bristly Warriors with huge jaws and a terrifying smell of invincibility about them.  They begin to attack Pai’grin’a and its remaining companions, but these Tooth-Warriors are not very smart and have little strategic sense, and when Pai’grin’a throws a stone at one of them, they do not know who threw it and they all turn and begin to attack one another.  Gradually they kill each other until only five are left, and these realize they would do better to surrender and to offer their services to Pai’grin’a instead of dying for no reason.  And that is the origin of the Tale of the Sown Warriors, who still live to this day in some part of the Lost World of the South.

       "A few of the reptile teeth are not sown, however, and as time goes by these teeth pass from Champion to Champion and fortress to fortress, until no one knows what has become of them.  But, good Easterners, one day I was foraging in a distant land – yes, I have wandered far, even as you have – and I came upon this bag in an abandoned cave-shrine, where the sea goes in and out and makes great spirit-music.  As I picked it up and peered inside, a ground-quake struck and I rushed out of the cave even as its ceiling crashed down behind me.  I brought the bag out with me and I stored the words of the cave-music in my remembering – ‘These are the seeds of the Sown Warriors.  One day you will give them to another Easterner.  Until that day comes, you cannot die.’  And so I have lived longer than any other Sorcerer ever on this world.  Do you have any more of that wonderfully delicious yellow berry that you gave me just now?”

Prepare to read the sequel to

The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head

by reading the previous volumes.

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