The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn

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Ardath Mayhar. The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn

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This book began as a series of stories in which I attempted to recreate the magical mood of the work of Lord Dunsany. As I went forward, the characters took up residence in my imagination, and the world of Kal-Noh and Si-Lun became a part of my interior landscape. Before I was finished with that world, I had written four novels set in different parts of it, Lords of the Triple Moons being a sort of prehistory, and Warlock’s Gift an entirely independent book, set on a distant continent.

Seekers, however, was the first, and almost every chapter of it began with an intensely clear visual image of a vital scene. This enchanting experience hooked me firmly into writing fantasy, and it was one that I will always treasure. How the Gods Wove in Kyrannon followed immediately, and it is thinly linked with this story, though set in a distant part of this world.

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“Yet not in all things is she wise, for, seeing Tro-Ven and finding him different from all that she knew, she chose to wed him, knowing him not as he was but as he wished to appear. And when he had learned what he could of the arts of her country and taken what he could of the riches of her father, and tired of her love, he chose to depart as he came, leaving her with an empty heart until I came.

“There was I born and there nurtured until I became a woman grown. My mother was my friend and my teacher, my guide and my benefactress, and she taught me all that she knew. Yet always she feared that one day my father might return and claim me as his child, to bear me away into this other world, so different from her own. So she tutored me in mysteries that only those of her own blood may know or practice, hoping that they would be useful to me, wherever I should be. And she placed within a talisman a part of herself to act as a focus for my powers and my arts, at need. And that talisman is the Cat with the Sapphire Eyes. Without it I can do much, but not, I fear, so much as my father. With it I can best him and thwart his purposes, when they mean me harm.”

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