The Yingyn Riders (fantasy novel) - Writers Forum

Cy Skywalker · 04-10-2007, 08:20 AM

Please critique. I revamped this from an earlier version to make a more active beginning. I'm unsure whether I succeeded at keeping the action of the sequence while sufficiently explaining the fantasy world. Also, tenses--if I'm describing something which doesn't exist in our world but is a constant in the fictional one, for example "yingyns are kept in round stalls.", should this be in present or past tense? This is the beginning of a novel.

Click click swish--claws on flagstones, feathers brushing the sides of the alley. Io was a small yingyn rooster, breed uncertain, black of iridescent feather with streaks of orange running down his neck from his small head. Anaba had tacked fast; her knees ached as the saddle threatened to slip under her if she did not cling so tightly to Io’s sides. He clucked, unsettled. This lane on the outskirts, where the craftspeople set up their stands and the butcher’s and tanner’s smells would not pervade the city, was narrow and brokenly cobbled in gray stone.

It had taken time for the guardsmen to get their fat white hens, but she could hear them coming now. They shouted, polite at first. "Madam! Madam magehalf, please return!"

She flicked a look behind her. Three mounted guards followed her, emerging around a corner; two men and a woman in slate-blue tunics and black swordbelts. Anaba’s orange cloak and long black hair flapped out on the edge of her vision. Io juked and cackled. Anaba swung her gaze forward again and leaned low in the saddle. The smell of clean feathers filled her nostrils.

Nothing unusual had happened yesterday, nor any day before. Strangest thing this week, Anaba and Neu had seen a horse. It pulled a cart loaded with grain beside the deep canal down from the western plateau. Probably the first of the season, said Neu, and he marveled with Anaba at the large animal’s smooth brown flanks and blonde mane. The rider high on the cart paid them no attention; he hailed from the west, so his eyes were only for the castle and city.

On the next day the drops of variety became a torrent. Guardsmen pushed in to the courtyard ringed by the homes of Neu and Anaba’s friends.

Most mages lived near to their kind in the Magic Quarter. Of course some lived away from Castillion, the High City of the Kingdom. Magic could be helpful anywhere. Magepartners could be found anywhere. Castillion’s population sustained the Quarter sufficiently, however, and mages were not needed so much that an effort was made to further their reach. Magic could be helpful anywhere--but it was not essential like farming, or smithing, storytelling or judgment.

Saying one mage implied two people, one born to magic and the second taken as partner. Although identifiable by other mages, the single person could not use magic before finding a volunteering second. Apparently the human mind does not harbor that much power. Most mages, though not all, were comprised of one male and one female. Most but not all had a purely platonic relationship. Love and marriage were not discouraged, nor encouraged.

Without warning each magepair was brought before the princes and the Council for interrogation concerning research into unpatriotic, foreign arts. Neu had refused to take part. Neu had ran--

and told her to flee.

Now his psychic presence stirred in the back of her mind like a second self.

Ahead, the low gray stone wall around the town’s outskirts blocked the alley mouth. As they neared it Anaba pressed against Io’s neck on his left side; the yingyn veered to the side and on to a wider road paved only in flattened, tan dirt. Some people looked up from their pottery wheels here as Anaba and then the guards--closer than before, shaking out their weighted nets--passed swiftly by.

The houses of the city and their backdrop, the grassy hill and white stone castle, rose up higher before Anaba like a line of stakes. She grew tired of flight. She reached under the front of the saddle for her wand which she had wedged between the thick saddle and the black blanket. Its normal couch, behind her right ear and into her long hair, would not do during speedy riding--

"Don’t fight." said Neu. As if he were embracing her she heard him speak beside her ear. "Ride for the black forest."

"Gasp--"

"I will meet you," said he.

Again she ducked. The guards had stopped calling. Yingyns are not made for endurance speed. Her rooster possessed longer legs than the guards’ hens, but soon they would throw the nets and catch her shoulders or Io’s feet. "Turn here--to the West Line!" She whispered. Although Io could not understand her speech he followed her touches with the reins and ran for the nearest city gate. The membranes to either side of his beak puffed in and out too quickly; pits and then bubbles in the skin of his face paling from healthy red to tired tan.

Nearest gate, a simple array of wooden slats, an opening in the wall manned by no one--Io pushed through. Immediately before her Anaba could see the wide West Line track and, down a long grassy slope, the unnaturally dark trees of the Old Weald. Such gnarled trunks beginning below the level of the road added to the unsettling atmosphere of that horizon To Anaba’s left the city wall ran past shops decorated with cloth awnings and the owners’ wares. Beyond the Line from this the land rose and the foreboding forest petered out toward the first of the pastures. No one entered the dark forest. No one dared to speak why--that is how horrid it is, the elders said, and every listener became a frightened child when rumors of unspeakable horror began to spread.

Anaba urged Io on across the track, fleetingly praying that he would not fail, reminding herself to take deep breaths instead of shallow gasps. Her partner had told her to go on, and she trusted him to give good orders as she trusted him to follow her own. This time, he certainly knew more about their predicament than did she.

Had she been on her own she would not have said a predicament existed.

Io balked at the slope but continued on as Anaba leaned and nudged him with her heels. A guard threw a net from the center of the road. It tangled with Io’s tail, spooking him forward faster; the stones tied at the edges of the web of ropes pulled its weight through Io’s long tail-feathers, not onto his back. He could continue on. Anaba glared into the unnatural dusk at the Old Weald’s edge.

In her next heartbeat’s time Neu’s presence disappeared from her senses. It was as if the audience at a circus were struck deaf and unable to smell. Flick--blindness. Flick--senses cut off. Love of her life, soulpartner, dead.

Anaba sucked in a rush of lukewarm air and choked. She grabbed around Io’s neck and sunk her face into the feathers at the nape. Walls of life fell away from her on all sides--a skeleton on a peak, cliffs avalanching, Anaba could not remember how to scream.

Io dashed into the woods. He bent some long feathers of his wings as he tried to flap down the suddenly steep and dark slope with his wings trapped under the girth. He did not know his rider had just become the first in humankind’s memory to be resplit from her magepartner. He knew, as he stopped stumbling and stood on the mossy ground in the new gloom, that no one was coming in after him. His rider was no longer steadying her own balance nor giving instructions.

Io sleepily wondered farther into the forest.

shianna · 04-10-2007, 12:04 PM

l liked this, thoroughly, but certain formatting aspects left me a bit confused. Trying to switch from normal font text to italicized without knowing the point made me blink, and l had to imagine it as normal text rather than italicized before it made any sense. The story itself was excellent - good flow, and the characterization was wonderful.

However, this entire section here was a little bit confusing:
"
Without warning each magepair was brought before the princes and the Council for interrogation concerning research into unpatriotic, foreign arts. Neu had refused to take part. Neu had ran--

and told her to flee. Anaba was not one to trust another’s judgment about herself, nor to follow a man because tradition dictated he rule the household or the relationship. His psychic presence stirred in the back of her mind like a second self. "

The way you phrased it it sounded like she didn't trust Neu's judgment, and the middle sentence actually seemed kind of pointless - how did it relate to the factor of his psychic presence in the back of his mind?

Again this area seemed a little bit confusing when compared to the previous part regarding this issue:
". Her partner had told her to go on, and she trusted him to give good orders as she trusted him to follow her own. This time, he certainly knew more about their predicament than did she.

Had she been on her own she would not have said a predicament existed."

Aside from that, this was very well written - good flow & to me the tenses were ok, although they're not my strong point. I liked certain phrases you had here - "next heartbeat's time" - original, and fresh because of that.
Good job so far
~laurie.

Cy Skywalker · 04-10-2007, 01:18 PM

I don't know what's with the font changes. I didn't do that--I'll go back into the post and fix it though. I'm glad you liked this. That one sentence was kinda pointless in the present context. I wanted to be sure that the reader knew that Anaba was not a subservient person, but she follows Neu's orders because he has more experience in 'action sequences' than she does and she's his magepartner, so they always work together. I can see how I should rework that. Thanks.

Cy Skywalker · 04-11-2007, 01:09 PM

Chapter Two: Homefront

The quest of capture failed, the three guardsmen quickly reported to their superior. Their prince’s name was Vlade, and he rode with his jittery mage-guard at the head of the column of white hens and armor in the color of fire on the return to the castle after the girl magehalf disappeared into the forest.

Orange banners had been unfurled to brighten the streets in the dusk light. Below the gentle hills in the west spread Castillion, brown thatch and white or stone walls and orange flags. Brown wooden houses, common to anywhere, clustered about the white rock walls of the castle itself. These were an effort of humanity for its own comfort and protection; there was no glory in it that gave exception to its inhabitants.

A hill rose above the buildings on the flatland, and a smooth stone slab there faced thick sides to the forests of the north and south. A thinner face looked over the east, and at the west the tower faded into the green slope until the straight tip, capped with a long straight balcony and snapping flag, pointed out into the chill air. It was a city of high culture in the wilderness, and it was said that the glory of the sovereignty shone like sunlight on water.
The soldiers came between the walls which stretched from the castle. Within the heavy gates the whitewash walls no longer had the look of residency, but of fortitude, with small windows. The streets ran north-south and around the walled circle.

"My prince." An avarian, professional keeper of birds, took Vlade’s yingyn at the base of the tower. The prince dismounted, then stretched his legs and ran his hands over his face with its growing blonde beard. The yingyn walked off, clucking at the avarian, who would lead it around to the stalls behind the castle’s front wall. Vlade caught his reflection in a barrel of water and thought that he might keep the beard despite the fact that it made him look like his father. He grimaced, thinking that his square face looked too slack.

The Bonded guard Kendra and Adrian joined him at the citadel doors as he passed into the castle proper, the great tower. The entrance hall was built of the white stone and seemed small but comforting as quiet place of reception. One hanging shrouded the far wall with a faded map of the known lands.

The man that swept in from one of the small wood-iron doors and embraced Vlade, calling him ‘brother’, wore the brown and orange cloak of the Council
over princely white. His hair was dark brown and medium-length, pulled back from the an open and pale-skinned face. He stood shorter than Vlade, though not by very much. It could not be told which was the elder. Devi’s silver-blue eyes glanced between the younger prince and his guard.

"Welcome back, brother." He said.

Vlade smiled. "Greetings, Devi. How goes the homefront?"

"Nothing greater than usual challenges us. The dragons have been quiet. Trade is good. A stonemason, some apprentice of a desertman, fell to his death off the high tower, but the recompenses have been made and the repairs to the tower completed. And my footsoldiers--you must see them, brother!"

Devi moved to the small door on their right hand and opened it. Vlade followed him into the light air of the parade grounds, where cut into the green slope beside the tower there was a place of paved, flat ground which the princes now walked above. The yingyn stables were a similar construction on the opposite side.

"These are those Orc creatures?" Vlade asked, with derision obvious in his voice.

Devi seemed to pay it no attention. "They are." He clapped his brother’s shoulder, looking over the mud and detritus he had accumulated while retracing Anaba’s tracks. "Did you have a successful hunt?"

The order for the capture of the magehalf whose partner was now a prisoner of the kingdom had come from the Council, which Devi headed. Each prince had his own force, his own duties; Vlade’s was called the People and Devi’s the was Council of Five. But here in this common mission they overlapped.

"She fled into the forest. She will not have survived the Old Weald."

Devi became slowly pensive. "The dark things have been restless, unpredictable. It would be wise to keep your guard up, and many eyes open."

"Ah, of course, brother."

A page walked onto the field below them then, without trumpet or herald announcing his arrival, holding a kingdom’s flag. Following him from the low entranceway from the barracks to the princes’ right came the new ranks. They were organized soldiers, each evenly beside and in line with another, each armored in black with dull silver underlay. Their heads were helmed and crested in silver stripes. Their visible skin was a black that could also have been green or deep gray. Beneath the armor the muscles were hard and shaped similarly to that of humans. Each face had strange, large eyes, and white teeth that bulged the skin of their mouths, but many of the faces were shaped differently, from pug-dog to wolf.

"Dragon-orcs." Vlade found himself mouthing the words, trying them out. The ranks snapped to attention before the princes, their feet stamping together with a finality, an entrance of silence, which promised roars to come.

Devi looked at them with pride. "These will cinch our safety."

Vlade hesitated. Then, "I would fight one. Test this new breed’s resilience."

"Their resilience is as it appears!" Devi scoffed. "And they are trained to kill.
You would not be spared."

"They are animals then?" He felt distinctly relieved that he would not have to test them.

"Like men, with none of their weaknesses."

"Or their humanity."

"Not if it is a weakness." Devi turned, his cloak sweeping through a layer of light dust.

Vlade wondered about this, but dismissed it as a prideful statement. The orcs marched back again, and Vlade offered Devi a dinner he declined. Vlade returned to his own rooms in the tower, and in the familiarity there was able to wonder about the change he had seen in his older brother, even from the entranceway to the corridors of the castle.