Liner Notes for Ten Thousand Ghosts
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I meant to do more with the haunted sword. I put it into the first story, teased it in Swift Tail, then just left it. Since chronologically it appears at the end of Cat Step Walker’s adventures in this series, I suppose there was no room for it. Still, that’s no excuse. Everything on the page is a choice.
Enough of that. Cat Step Walker lost his mojo when he faced the gorgon in Into The Forest. He’s an elf, immortal. He has powers of recuperation beyond those of mortal man. He’s got magic, and he lost it. Yet it grows back with his strength, not identical to how it was before.
He joined the Poor Brothers with every intention of following their rule, of spending a lifetime with them. And he might have done that, lived a human life as humble, despite his recovery. Of course adventure intervened.
This is a swords and sorcery adventure with some elements of recovery and redemption and growth. It’s not supposed to be all that deep. Cat Step Walker, coming back to his powers encounters a dark and deadly magical enemy. As ever it’s the risen dead, his recurring, usual enemy.
The constraints that bind him at the start, following orders, following the strictures of the Poor Brothers, they prevent him acting. Yet would that have made a difference? The story claims it would not, and that might be Cat Step Walker engaging in a little self-justification. Still, what could he do? Would anyone have listened? Wasn’t it already too late?
Let’s talk magic. There’s three sorts in this one story, maybe four, maybe more. First the necromancy. It’s accidental, the byproduct of a crime. The slaughter of many, then buried, sealed under the hill, under the town. You’d hope it would be diluted by time, fading away. Yet instead it’s fermented there, becoming more potent. Waiting for something to break it open and spill forth.
The forest queen is a primordial, mythical, monstrous creature. And so with her magic. I maybe explain a little too much, the magic edging towards being a system. Yet I think it maintains a bit of mystery. The clash of the petrification gaze with the immaterial. We don’t know if this will work, if anything will happen. Cat Step Walker certainly doesn’t. Still, worth a try.
The third magic is elf-magic. Walker has power over sleep; Swift Tail over earth. (Their elder cousin Immaterial Tricks has time as her ally, something that comes up in Tapping The Admiral). We’re almost familiar with this now if we’ve been following along. Almost familiar. Maybe there’s a little mystery left there. How many people can Walker put to sleep? Can he change their mind?
The fourth one is the sword, making magic, something that we’ve not quite seen, with knives and with distilling.
This story may be the one most inside Walker’s head, and so inside the magic. He’s been inconsistent, though I have an excuse for that – the stories are taking place over generations. Walker is living different lives. It’s the elf thing, don’t get stuck in a rut, find a new profession to master, a new objective to fulfil.
And of course this is the final story in the sequence, with Walker giving up a previous career and going on to search for a new one. A suitable place to end.
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