Logan's Reign

A Tale of Geshem by Brian Doyle

No permission has been given, no offence has been intended. 

As one might expect from a Geshem tale, most characters are noticeably
based on the creations of, amongst others, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Chris
Claremont, John Byrne, Louise Simonson, Fabian Nicieza and Warren Ellis.
"If you're going to steal, steal from the very best!"

With an extra special bow to Peter David, who created Geshem in the first
place, and so built a most entertaining world for me to use as a stage.

Prologue

I knew that if Mum or Dad found me out of bed at this time of night,
they'd tan my hide, Prince or no. 

Or worse, because I'm fourteen and a little old for spankings, Dad
would look at me in that disappointed way that hurts worse than
anything else.

It wasn't really _my_ fault, it was just that all the exciting stuff
was happening after Rahne and I were supposed to be up in bed, and 
I didn't want to miss the arrival of Bryn of Valon and his entourage.
Rahne wanted to come sneaking out with me, but I'd made her stay, she's
only eight and might get us into trouble, even if I balanced in the
fact that Mum and Dad would go easier on her than on me.

Oh, I'm sorry, allow me to introduce myself properly, I'm Prince Logan,
Rightful Heir to the Wolfhead Throne of the Realm of Geshem and all its
Demesnes and first born of Queen Rain the Red and her Prince Consort,
Douglas Silvertongue. 

Yes I know it's tough to say, you just try living it for a while! 

Apparently I'm named for a hero from another Realm impossibly far away.
They tell me that he came to Geshem's defence in our hour of greatest
need. Logan was a mighty and noble warrior and, according to the bards,
the size of a hillside and equal to twenty men in battle, which I
happen to think makes him someone I'm very glad to be named after,
though it does leave me a lot of catching up to do. 

They keep telling me how lucky I am to be a Prince of Geshem, and that
may well be true but, even looking at the other Royal Families I've
met, we're a strange family.

Mum was born to be Queen and it shows in everything she does, but Dad
grew up as a peasant and it shows in everything _he_ does.  I'm not
being condescending when I say he was a peasant, just honest. Dad says
there's nothing wrong with calling a peasant a peasant, as long as you
respect and understand what that means -- a hard-working person without
whom our Realm would be nothing. Mum says that because Dad learned to
read and write so late, he takes it very seriously. He's always very
precise about words and their meaning, 'cos he says he's learned that
words last longer than people. I think I know what that means, but I'm
pretty sure there's a depth to it I don't quite see yet.

There was a lot of fuss about Mum marrying Dad apparently. It created 
a midden of trouble with some of the older Lords. They said that a
commoner entering the Royal Line was against the old ways, but the
Shaman and the Mage supported her choice, and so did most of the
warriors in the Palace, who all coincidentally happened to be standing
behind Mum with their hands on their weapons when she made the
announcement, so it happened anyway. Dad was crowned Prince Consort
immediately after the wedding, and was handed the Warlock Staff that
the Mage had been carrying since the old King had become too ill to use
it.

Mum's choice seems to have been the right one too - Dad takes the whole
ruling thing very seriously, just like the learning. Mum says it's for
the same reason as his reading: She always expected to rule and was
trained for it from birth, so it was more or less a matter of course
for her, but Dad had to learn from scratch in almost no time at all.

Dad was helped not only by his own common-sense, but by a gift from
Mum. At their wedding they exchanged rings and the one she gave him
used to belong to her father. It's one of the Crown Jewels, and it
allows whoever wears it to understand and speak any language in the
Realm of Geshem. The Shaman always says - "A Prince should always be
able to speak to any of his subjects without fear, and understand what
they are saying to him. It's understanding _why_ they are saying it to
him that is the real task."

It made Dad a really good leader, though I'm a bit biased there I
suppose, and the land has needed one. By living past her 16th birthday,
Mum basically put a lot of astrologers and seers out of business, and
they weren't very happy as _all_ their predictions for the future had
been based on her dying. In surviving, she basically changed the course
of the future from the ground up. 

The people too, had relied on the knowledge that the seers had given
them, and they found themselves unsure of what to do next. Mum and Dad
had to work harder than you can imagine in order to lead the people,
rebuilding confidence in the future, quelling rebellions... it was a
tough time for everyone. Things are more stable now, people are more
self reliant, and I think Dad had a lot to do with that. 

Mum has always been used to giving orders and being obeyed because of
who she is, but Dad has to take a different approach. People listen
when he talks and passes judgements because they know that he's thought
the matter through, and can explain any decision he's made. He rallies
his troops in battle, not with empty promises of glory, or lying to
them about their chances, but by describing what they were fighting for
in a way that they understand and can believe in. The Mage says that
courage makes a good Prince, fairness a respected one and wisdom a
loved one. I hope I can be at least one of those when I grow up. 

Mum and Dad are certainly doing what they can to help me understand
the... I mean _my_ people. I still go and visit Gran, Dad's mother,
a lot. When Dad married Mum, Gran was offered a set of rooms in the
castle. She turned it down, saying that not only was she quite
comfortable in the house and home she'd help her husband build and the
work she did, but that Dad needed to be reminded where he came from. 

If all his family were in the castle, she said, then that's all he
would think about, and forget about the outside. I think Dad was proud
of her choice; he certainly goes to see her regularly, and makes
certain I go there too to help out. I may be the only Prince in the
whole world who has to do farm chores, but Gran says that it will make
me a better King, though I'm not sure exactly why slopping out pigs is
good training. Dad says that when I have to deal with politicians, I'll
understand. Anyway, I know Dad earned a lot of respect from the people
in the kingdom because he can, and more importantly does, chop wood,
plough fields and help in farrowing a sow with the best of them, and if
it's good enough for him....

I hope I get my temper from Dad -- he doesn't get angry often, but it's
not something you ever want to see twice, because you know that if you
have done enough to make him mad, then it must have been something
really bad.

My little sister Rahne gets her temper from Mum. She flares up a lot
more often, but it doesn't last as long. That doesn't make it easier at
the time, but it's sort of a help knowing it will blow over quickly.

I know that I get my hair from Dad because there's no one else it could
be from. Before I was born Dad led an army against some rebel Lords. He
won, but was badly hurt and the Shaman had to use magic and a piece of
the Warlock Staff to save him. Now his left arm and some other parts of
his chest, back and left leg are all made out of steel. They work as
well as normal flesh and blood, but are quite cold to the touch. I
guess they must look strange to outsiders, but I never think about it
though, he's just my Dad after all.

One of the side effects of the spell that saved him became apparent
when I was born. I have silver hair, I don't mean "old-man grey" or
"white" or the "silver-grey" that some people talk about, but like the
actual metal. Even the Mage isn't too sure what it exactly is made out
of. It grows like normal hair, but is impossible to cut, and it's
really sharp to the touch. My hair is short on top, like Mum's, and I
keep the length down the back pulled into a ponytail, just to get it
out of the way. I had to weave some plucked hairs into a loop to get
something strong enough to bind it back as it kept cutting through
everything else I tried. I have some steel-grey flecks in my eyes too,
though they're mostly green like Mum's. 

I've been wondering about what surname I'll use at my Rite of Accession
on my next birthday. I've been thinking about "Ironmane" or
"Silvercrown" something like that, sort of like Dad's "Silvertongue",
but I can't decide yet.

Another side-effect of the magic, and I'm not sure which side of the
family I get it from, is that I can understand animal talk. It's not
easy, I need to focus really hard on what's being said, and I'm best
with canines like dogs, wolves and foxes, but I can usually pick up
what most animals are saying. Dad, Mum, the Mage and the Shaman are the
only ones who know I can do it, and they've told me to keep it secret,
because I never know when it might be a handy advantage to have. The
only limit is that I mustn't use it to spy unfairly on others. When Mum
and Dad _both_ use that tone, not even Knights of the Realm argue, and
I don't either.

My little sister Rahne was affected by the magic of Geshem too, but in
a different way. Before she even knew she was pregnant with Rahne, Mum
helped fight off a mad necromancer who was attacking the castle using
an army of beast-things, not-quite-men reanimated from corpses and
animal carcases. Saving Mum from a horrible twisted bird-boy left Dad
open to attack and the necromancer shot him in the back with a
crossbow. Mum was so mad when she saw Dad hurt she called on her
Blood-right, actually _becoming_ the wolf that's the symbol of Geshem.
The creature she became took the necromancer's head off with one swipe
of her claws. I thought Dad being shot was the scariest thing I'd ever
seen, but Mum turning into that enormous wolf was worse, until I saw
she really was just Mum, protecting Dad as always, even if she did look
like something else for a few minutes. Luckily for Dad, the necromancer
hit one of his metal parts, so it was only a.... well, whatever you
call a flesh wound when the flesh is made of steel.

Eight months later, when Rahne was born she had slightly pointed ears,
like mine, red hair like Mum's and Dad's blue eyes, but at first they
thought her left hand was deformed. It turned out that it was actually
a paw, shaped just like a wolf's. No one had ever seen anything like it
before, though there were a couple of legends so old even the Mage
couldn't tell whether they were relevant or not. You should have heard
what Mum threatened to do to the priests who said that the baby should
be left to die as an abomination, until she realised I could hear what
she was saying. I've spent years trying to find out what some of those
words mean, but the word-book the Shaman uses to teach me doesn't list
them, and even the guards I asked to help out refused, saying that it
was more than their souls were worth if Mum ever found out. Some of
them didn't believe me when I said that it was my Mum that had
originally used them. Let's just say that an inventively disgusting
idea involving the words "eunuch" and "teeth" is about the only one I
can even hint at.

Rahne can do most things with her paw, except pick things up of course
(no thumb), and we've since discovered that the claws that grow from it
are made of the same kind of stuff as my hair. Mum and Dad have never
forgiven themselves for it, but I'm not sure why, as Rahne never
complains about it. Besides, any outsider who makes fun of it when
she's working at Gran's has an eight year old with a temper and metal
claws to deal with! I don't interfere when that happens... unless she
looks like she's going to hurt them _too_ much.

To show that she feels no shame in her paw, she wears a talisman that
Mum gave her, a bronze wolf's head torc. I have one too, except mine is
silver. There were originally three in the Crown Jewels, the Royal
Seals of Geshem, but Mum gave the gold one away years ago, to the
warrior-princess from a distant Realm whose name Rahne carries, the
same place "Logan" comes from seemingly.

Perhaps the scariest thing about all this is that as the heir to the
throne, I know the Blood-right will pass to me eventually. It's
different for every King or Queen, and not knowing what it might do to
me makes it even more frightening. I've seen Mum and Dad look at me
sometimes with worried looks and I think I know why they might feel
like that, because it's how I feel too. It's no fun finding out that,
after years of being relatively normal, you're suddenly going to be
different, be able to do something else that normal people can't. If
it weren't the tradition here, it's the sort of thing that could make 
a lot of fear and resentment amongst ordinary people.

So that's my family: a fiery tempered werewolf queen, a part-metal
peasant turned statesman, a young warrior-to-be with metal hair and a
hot-headed little girl with a steel-tipped paw! Quite a family tree!
Anyway, that's enough about our history, on to the tale I'm going to
tell you ...