Of Wizards and Norns
Prologue to The Mantis King
By Paul Weber
Copyright © 2012 by Paul Weber
Permission is hereby granted to distribute this prologue, free of charge, in electronic form, so long as this copyright notice is included. Distribution of this work in any other form, including but not limited to printed books, audio books, and film, without the express written consent of the author or his heirs, is prohibited.
On the cover: Portrait of a Green Warrior Woman, by Misty Tang.
The world in which we live—the material world of stone and flesh—is bounded by a world of spirit which we humans (dull as we are) cannot perceive, with but a few notable exceptions. As a species, we find this most frustrating, so we continually try to strike through the mask that separates us from the world of spirit. All the great religions and myths of the world center on this usually futile attempt to strike through the mask, to be able to perceive not only our own reality, but other realities and universes that exist, but are beyond the power of our minds to perceive or command.
Most of our species would be surprised to learn that the other side finds itself in much the same quandary; they too would like to strike through the mask from the other side, to experience the world of sight and sound, of touch and taste. For those who live in the spirit world, marvelous beings though they be, cannot experience the physical delights of corporeal existence, except in rare, tantalizing glimpses.
Those of us on the physical side of existence can occasionally experience a tantalizing taste of the spirit world in either of two ways. The first way is the act of dreaming, when our spiritual force, freed for a brief time from the sleeping body, can reach out to the world of spirit. The second way, the arts of prophecy and divination, can also give brief glimpses of the other side. This second way (reader, be warned!) is unfortunately also the province of innumerable charlatans, whose clever manipulation of gullible people gives all spirituality a bad name. The visions of the Hebrew prophet Daniel, for example, were almost certainly genuine (as verified by the Norn’s Council). Modern charlatans, however, use the brilliance of the Book of Daniel in order to collect money, with which they buy mansions, fine clothes, excellent cars, and the fine food that gives them their hallmark porcine appearance. The fact that their charades sully the image of the prophets they invoke, makes them very naughty people indeed.
Those who exist on the spiritual side can also briefly touch our world, chiefly by reaching through the mask through the medium of our dreams. Other forms of altered mental states, such as trances and hypnosis, also serve this purpose, but dreams are the chief means by which those on the other side contact us.
Throughout history, certain beings of the spiritual world, unable to resist the temptations of our physical world, have entered our universe through our dreams. One such spirit is called an incubus—a being that enters the dreaming mind and body of a human female and fathers a child through her. Sometimes, the woman is married, and the child is happily assumed to be the offspring of the father. In other cases, however, the incubus targets a virgin woman, who conceives and bears a child, sometimes called a cambion. This explains the fact that cultures across the world are replete with tales of virgins conceiving without having known a man. The resultant children are always remarkable in their abilities. Some possess the ability to cure the sick and handicapped with the merest word or touch. All children of incubi possess the gift of prophecy. Some among them possess the ability to travel freely from world to world, from universe to universe, from era to era. Children of incubi possess also the gift of magic, which is really just science carried to levels humans, with our puny intellects, do not as yet comprehend. All children of incubi are blessed with unusually long lives, while others, though not technically immortal, will live forever, so long as they do not receive a mortal wound. At a certain point, their aging process stops, and they live continuously, sometimes in the form of a wise old man, sometimes as a man of about thirty, sometimes as a mere stripling. The child of an incubus can be either man or woman. Among such females, many become those wise old women who never seem to die—because they don’t. Others live countless ages as lovely young lasses, breaking the hearts of countless young men, not usually out of spite, but because they realize that continuing a relationship with a man who ages, while they stay youthful and gorgeous, would be a crushing blow to the male ego.
Generally speaking, the children of incubi are creatures of great perceptiveness and good will. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Some children of incubi are born without the normal human aversion to inflicting pain and suffering in others; they are often called psychopaths. To these creatures, inflicting pain and suffering is just as normal as eating breakfast. We see examples of this type of creature throughout history, in the form of mass murderers, and in the form of kings and princes who use their authority to start wars in which countless innocents are killed. To these latter beings, the suffering of thousands or millions causes them not a whit of discomfort, so long as the suffering helps them pursue their own grandiose delusions. Indeed, the bizarre behavior of royal families throughout the world and throughout history is best explained by the fact that many of them are cambions, vying among themselves to rule the world of men to wicked ends. Normal humans are usually quite inept at detecting cambions in their midst, though other cambions recognize each other instantaneously.
In the kingdom of Thulia, ages ago, a child was born to a virgin and an incubus who, though not evil or nasty, was certainly mischievous. His name was Zoltan, later surnamed Hexmaster. He was a child of extraordinary intellect and ability, mastering Thulian craft and science by the time he was thirteen—a discipline that normally takes decades of unwavering effort. Always hungry for more knowledge, Zoltan applied to apprentice as a Thulian Norn—something that simply was not done. For Norn-craft is the exclusive domain of females, but Zoltan was the exception that proved the rule. He mastered all their techniques of healing, and absorbed all their knowledge of herbs and spells, by the time he was thirty. Being the son of an incubus, however, he did not look thirty; he seemed forever stuck at eighteen, the age when men are most beautiful.
At that point Zoltan, for lack of a better word, got bored. There seemed nothing left for him to learn and master. And boys of eighteen—even when they are thirty—can become quite naughty when they don’t have anything to challenge them. Zoltan laid out a plan to take command of the Kingdom of Thulia, using his boyish good looks to gain the loyalty of several poor Norns who could not resist his charms. He nearly succeeded. Exhaustive research by the Venerable Grimur into this incident indicates that Zoltan had no plans for the kingdom beyond taking control; in fact, he might have made a fairly good king if he could be kept from getting bored. By a stroke of sheer luck, however, his plot was found out, and he was bound, with great difficulty, and delivered to the Frost-Giants, the greatest masters of magic, for eternal imprisonment (for the Norns, as accomplished at magic as they were, still could not build a prison that could hold the Hexmaster). The Frost-Giants of Trollenheim created a magic cage of ice guarded by a fearsome white she-wolf, and imprisoned the mischief-maker.
Another famous son of an incubus was the wise old man known as Buonarroti. He was born of a virgin in the blessed land of Thulia. Certain monks of Thulia, fearing the child would be agent of evil, urged that he be killed, along with his mother. The Norns, however, being more rational than their brothers, were able to convince the monks to allow the child to be born. The monks performed a ritual known as baptism on the infant, hoping to avert demon-possession. There was never any such danger, but the ritual comforted them nonetheless.
The boy Buonarroti, like Zoltan, showed immen
se abilities in the magical sciences, including the rare gift of being able to travel through time and space. At the age of forty-four, Buonarroti used this power for an extensive journey, traveling back in time to ancient Greece, where he convinced an obscure thinker named Socrates to open something called an academy. Moving to other times and places, he assisted an Austrian fellow named Leopold on how best to teach music to his gifted son, advised a fellow named George on how to best fight the mightiest army in the world, and fought under a fellow named Wellington to help put an end to a particularly brilliant but nasty tyrant (who was also, the perceptive reader must have gleaned by now, a cambion).
At the age of sixty-five, when his hair and beard had turned snow-white, he stopped aging, keeping forever the form of a wise old man and mentor. It was at this time that he took a time journey to the land of Thulia, where he befriended