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Title: Hero
’Verse/characters: : Wild Roses, (Ian Sabaey)
Prompt: 096. Writer’s Choice: "Hero"
Word Count: 604
Rating: G
Notes: so what do you think, when you hear the word?
Truth to tell, he was a lot more complicated and a helluva lot more human than history’s fairy-tales make him out to be.
There’s stories that he went away, after no-one heard from him again, Questing, trying to find something to top his greatest feat and make his reputation that much grander. Like he’s a folktale hero, y’know?
Except that if you look at the facts and fragments of his actual life, you start wondering if there was ever anything of the hero at all in Ian Tattersall Sabaey.
He married young, to a woman who never loved more than his position and his potential. He fell in love years later, after the first of his children were born, but he kept his word in the form of his marriage vow, and never breathed even indiscretion to the lady he loved.
He and his wife had had two children before he succeeded with the Trick that made him famous--and you never hear of them, now do you? The younger of the two, the girl Ophelie, followed in her father’s footsteps, but she never had the sort of luck he did--and of the four who came after the Trick, the eldest walked away, the middle two their mother took to try to make a king from, and the youngest the boys themselves raised, their mother too intent on her politicking to bother with a child too young for her patterns.
The younger of the mother-made kings managed their goal. What she in her pride forgot was that her sons were hers in more than name and potential title. As she planned, so planned they. So it came as a surprise when her son the new King successfully banished his elder brother to the limits of his own pattern-working ability, swore his younger brother in as a King’s Hand, and had her assassinated.
Ah, you’ve heard of some of that before--probably about the brothers. Now, what was become of Ian, the man who made his family famous enough to take the throne?
The history falls silent there, his son king and his wife dead.
The Trick he created, the world he tried to save, is what killed the world he knew.
You see, his Trick, his way to step between worlds, made it so easy that ships could sail from cheap abundance to well-paying need with full holds. The merchanting families grew richer still, and they brought the best home with them, be it goods, people or crafts.
Ian’s home, his capital city with its elaborate sun-aligned fashions and its asymmetric mages, became a blend of many places, a port city true.
The mages of his Court scattered, each pursuing individual dreams and territories. Teachers taught one or two students at a time--perhaps in a lifetime--not dozens. There were no more symposiums, no more enclaves of like-minded magery-workers. Words and paper-winged birds flew between old friends, but physical meetings became few, and fewer still as time passed.
His Trick, his ‘triumph’, broke his heart. Later it took his body--he stepped between worlds and his body never stepped out again at his destination. He stayed, of course--how could a man so tied to such a legend die, after all?--but as a spirit, an idea, a mindset, not a man.
His son’s children’s children pass secrets to each other--that if you think the right way, if you see a pattern perfectly on edge you can speak to Ian. You can borrow Ian’s luck, for a moment or hours or days, if you keep your mind clear.
Not quite the legacy of a Quester, that.
But his legacy, either way, gives the choice to you.
’Verse/characters: : Wild Roses, (Ian Sabaey)
Prompt: 096. Writer’s Choice: "Hero"
Word Count: 604
Rating: G
Notes: so what do you think, when you hear the word?
Truth to tell, he was a lot more complicated and a helluva lot more human than history’s fairy-tales make him out to be.
There’s stories that he went away, after no-one heard from him again, Questing, trying to find something to top his greatest feat and make his reputation that much grander. Like he’s a folktale hero, y’know?
Except that if you look at the facts and fragments of his actual life, you start wondering if there was ever anything of the hero at all in Ian Tattersall Sabaey.
He married young, to a woman who never loved more than his position and his potential. He fell in love years later, after the first of his children were born, but he kept his word in the form of his marriage vow, and never breathed even indiscretion to the lady he loved.
He and his wife had had two children before he succeeded with the Trick that made him famous--and you never hear of them, now do you? The younger of the two, the girl Ophelie, followed in her father’s footsteps, but she never had the sort of luck he did--and of the four who came after the Trick, the eldest walked away, the middle two their mother took to try to make a king from, and the youngest the boys themselves raised, their mother too intent on her politicking to bother with a child too young for her patterns.
The younger of the mother-made kings managed their goal. What she in her pride forgot was that her sons were hers in more than name and potential title. As she planned, so planned they. So it came as a surprise when her son the new King successfully banished his elder brother to the limits of his own pattern-working ability, swore his younger brother in as a King’s Hand, and had her assassinated.
Ah, you’ve heard of some of that before--probably about the brothers. Now, what was become of Ian, the man who made his family famous enough to take the throne?
The history falls silent there, his son king and his wife dead.
The Trick he created, the world he tried to save, is what killed the world he knew.
You see, his Trick, his way to step between worlds, made it so easy that ships could sail from cheap abundance to well-paying need with full holds. The merchanting families grew richer still, and they brought the best home with them, be it goods, people or crafts.
Ian’s home, his capital city with its elaborate sun-aligned fashions and its asymmetric mages, became a blend of many places, a port city true.
The mages of his Court scattered, each pursuing individual dreams and territories. Teachers taught one or two students at a time--perhaps in a lifetime--not dozens. There were no more symposiums, no more enclaves of like-minded magery-workers. Words and paper-winged birds flew between old friends, but physical meetings became few, and fewer still as time passed.
His Trick, his ‘triumph’, broke his heart. Later it took his body--he stepped between worlds and his body never stepped out again at his destination. He stayed, of course--how could a man so tied to such a legend die, after all?--but as a spirit, an idea, a mindset, not a man.
His son’s children’s children pass secrets to each other--that if you think the right way, if you see a pattern perfectly on edge you can speak to Ian. You can borrow Ian’s luck, for a moment or hours or days, if you keep your mind clear.
Not quite the legacy of a Quester, that.
But his legacy, either way, gives the choice to you.
