Worlds of the Timestream: The Interregnum Series, Book 6: The Builder

Worlds of the Timestream: The Interregnum, Book 7: The Throne, Book 4: Paladin or Time out of Heart

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It didn't occur to her to ask how or when he had learned the trade, or why he knew the local terrain.

Brian McIlhargey knew whatever was necessary, whenever he needed it. It gave her a warm feeling to depend on him. She stamped a mental foot, declaring to herself, He's my father, even if he isn't. She'd never forgotten that awful day when he'd told her Brian McIlhargey had no children, that she was daughter to Jack Devereaux and Katherina Rourke, both tragically killed at Glenmorgan.

So, it was done. They slipped down to a hidden cove where they waited a few days until a small freighter stopped to unload illegal cargo out of sight of the ineffective local customs office. Brian had little difficulty persuading the captain to take on an experienced hand and a neophyte who was unafraid of hard work.

Large modern freighters were almost entirely automatic, but these rusty old tramps required a crew of up to a dozen for loading and unloading at the numerous tiny ports of call that lacked robots. They embarked on a long voyage through the Far East, stopping in China and various places in the Irish East Indies, before circling back toward Penal City in Australia. The captain, an old soldier himself, saw more than merely a strong deckhand in Brian's massive bulk, military mien, and the sword hanging ominously in a worn scabbard.

He habitually hired such men. McIlhargey's impossibly tall girl was too young to fight, but if she could peel potatoes for her keep, and otherwise stay out of the crew's way, her presence was a small price for a prime sword hand. A day out of Penal City, in the sleepy predawn gloom, his precautions proved as prescient as his assessments were premature.

Meghan was dressing in the tiny cabin she shared with her father when she heard a thump, followed by running feet, then a scream. Brian sprang from the bed, instantly alert. The two rushed on deck to find the freighter's dozen crew members fighting for their lives. Two low, open boats, each carrying fifteen raiders, had crept up on them from the nearby shore in the fog that had caused them to anchor here the night before.

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One group must have beaten the other to the prize and boarded on the port side, where a crewman's body lay, his throat cut. Those in the second boat were tossing grapples to follow on the starboard. They had to be stopped, or the ship would be overrun. Meghan and Brian ran to the rail and slashed at the grapple ropes, causing several pirates to fall back from their climb. Then, some sixth sense warning her, Meghan spun about to encounter a woman rushing her, sword in one hand, and bloody knife in the other. Meghan stood her ground, and the pirate carried on, slashing low toward her legs.

She was too slow. In mechanical rehearsal of a standard defensive routine, Meghan jumped over the attack, simultaneously burying her own blade in the other's shoulder. Her opponent slumped to the deck to bleed away her life, and Meghan whirled to face a man screaming obscenities as he leaped at her from the rail. Too late to change course, he impaled himself on her blade.

She withdrew it before he fell, and faced a third opponent, who died an instant after slipping in a pool of blood. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her father seize a man from the rail and hurl him back. There was a loud cracking sound, rushing water, and screams erupted below. Before the pirate boat's sinking could register, she faced two more men from the first crew. But they failed to fight in tandem, so she was able to turn them, dispatching one with a thrust to the chest, at which the other threw down his blade and surrendered.

Suddenly, it was over. Nineteen pirates were dead on deck, and six drowned when their boat capsized. Only two sailors died in addition to the watchman, and none of the others were critically wounded. The captain looked across to where Brian and Meghan stood among nine bodies, clicked his heels, came to attention, and snapped off a salute to the pair whose attention to the second boat had saved his vessel and his life. As when she was forced to run VanBuren through, Meghan responded by throwing up, and the three men and one woman she killed populated her nightmares for weeks afterwards.

When she spoke of her revulsion, her father shrugged, repeating what he'd said at Edwardston. They had to return to Penal City with the bodies and prisoners, but the subsequent investigating board heard no mention of illegal sword work by a fourteen-year-old, and Meghan was not called to testify. A few days later, both their journey and a semblance of former order were resumed, though crew members, who had previously joked with Meghan and treated her as a child, were now more careful, addressing her politely as "Mistress McIlhargey", and a couple of times as "My Lady".

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They travelled on via India, and thence to South Africa. At the Cape, she and Brian were paid out, and, after waiting a month for a suitable berth, returned to sea, making their way via African and European ports to the small river port town of London in the southeast of the largest of the Emerald Isles. As they approached their destination, Meghan excitedly reviewed her history. The big island had for centuries been home to three people groups. To the north were the Scots, who had been one nation with the Irish, sharing a single language and traditional customs for over nine centuries. In convergence with events on Tirdia, they eventually adopted the original Roman name for Ireland of "Scotia".

To the west, the Welsh had been Irish allies nearly as long, though they proudly persisted in keeping alive their own version of Gaelic, their unwieldy names, and the customs many Irish found quaint. The largest part of the big island, however, had been home to a diverse group of warring tribes who were not at any time after Arthur able to unite themselves under one rule, though by all spoke roughly the same tongue. In , then High King Patrick V of Ireland was conned into hiring Amerigo Vespucci, the fantastic Florentine pickle dealer turned pirate, as a privateer under the Irish flag to patrol the Atlantic against English pirates.

When Vespucci instead sailed away on his own adventure and stumbled onto a whole new world that he promptly named after himself, the King was quick to dismiss him and claim the lands for the Irish crown.

Patrick's attempt to call the western continent "New Hibernia" came to naught, however, after Vespucci's lecture tour to the courts of Europe resulted in everyone else applying his name. In eighteen short years the discovery saw greatly expanded trade and made Ireland the leading world power, but brought clashes with other nations wanting to share the spoil.

The Spanish established themselves peacefully in the new world's southern hemisphere, but the English tribes' persistence in warring with their neighbours and mounting pirate raids on the very coasts of Ireland and her allies eventually offered sufficient provocation for war in order to protect the lucrative world trade. What at the time passed for government hereabouts refused to act. He pointed out a massive monument on their port side. Massive reinforcements followed, and we launched full-scale war. When by we and our allies conquered the badly-divided warring tribes of England and brought them under Irish rule, we found ourselves addicted to conquest.

In the process of extending the new United Irish Kingdom, the English became our finest soldiers and sailors. When Spain, last of the old European powers, fell in , nearly a century of expansion came to an end, and Ireland's Peace was worldwide. Megan enjoyed her Da's history lectures. He made it sound like he'd been there, or interviewed someone who had. How very differently things turned out in Tirdia's England, she thought, where the Normans did for England in what Ireland achieved here centuries later.

On both worlds a United Kingdom rose in the isles, but there a unified England gained ascendancy, and Ireland became her slave. This sleepy port of London served as the administrator's seat, but was a small town of no military importance. It had but a few thousand inhabitants from the look of it. She knew her father had never visited London, and that somehow added to her excitement. She'd be able to learn about the place independently. As the two walked up a narrow cobbled street from the dock, the fog lifted, revealing the beauty of a bright summer day. Surrounding buildings were uniformly of reddish brick, looking as fresh and new as the day it had been laid, most of it a century earlier, just following the fire that destroyed much of the old wooden town in They took lodgings at the Boar's Head Inn, and Brian immediately sent a message on the public MT requesting an appointment with Protector Kent to seek a position in his household.

At the appointed time of nine o'clock next morning Brian and Meghan were ushered by a secretary into the second story office of the main government building. They entered a plainly appointed room with a few framed certificates on the wall behind a huge oak desk. First appearances could be deceiving, and Brian did a double take as he scanned the room and recognized three paintings on other walls as priceless Italian masters. He instinctively supposed them to be originals. So much for one stereotype. The owner of this office was clearly no barbarian, as the Irish often termed the English.

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If anything, the simple but costly appointments enhanced the already imposing stature of the man who rose to his feet behind the desk at their entry. He was a giant, slightly taller than Brian and like him, the possessor of an enormous muscular frame that bespoke barely suppressed mighty potency. Here's a worthy warrior , Brian thought, deciding he liked the fellow at first sight. Beside him, and slightly to the rear on either side, stood two lanky young men.

I could speak more eloquently and chronologically today, but surely with less verisimilitude, so we retain them in their context the better to communicate our collective raw mental anguish. The Paladin, Fall My good husband has been my staff and right arm through my mental trauma, as countless memories return and I piece together who I really am, what Ireland and I have been to one another these five plus centuries, what we must be going forward. Even the remembering thus far might have shattered me without him. We two are making a great team, and plan to keep each other young.

He's the best thing that's happened to me since Even after all the memory pain thus far, my recollections start abruptly in mid and fuzz to hot smoky nothingness before Yet, my earliest memories of growing up in this version of me are long after that. What happened before and between? I'm afraid to learn the missing end pieces, because when I try, all is flames. Have I been through hell and back? But we're closing in on complete mental restoration.

I'll need my man when the breakthrough comes--perhaps tonight. Alone isn't within a cannon shot of an option. A few months ago, dreams of a previous life stretching back to my awakening were vague, fragmentary, unordered, infrequent--only gradually gaining coherence and order, the occasional one painfully stark. Still, they claimed little credibility until one delivered a cypher key, allowing Lucas to unlock one of the second set of journals stored in Tara's palace archives--those following Queen Amethyst's day and that we now know extend through , when the stash abruptly ceases.

I still wouldn't have believed it, but evidence piled up until we dreamers knew Samadeya's identity, and we stormed his defences, as he notes above. By the time of those nightly recitals and cross-questioning, dreamers and partners numbered over a dozen strong. In his "spare" time, Lucas single-mindedly decyphered the Admiral Amy Rea and Queen Amethyst Meathe journals, providing the grist for the first three volumes of The Throne , earning him Ollamh in Mathematics.

But the latter Paladin documents were more securely encoded with a different class of key, spanned a far longer time, and unlocked vastly more secrets.

The Builder

We eventually extracted confirming elements for some of those histories from Samadeya, but at first only gradually was I forced to admit one of us dreamers knew those sixteenth and following century events, because she'd been there, done them. Over many months, more decryption keys came to light, and we read additional volumes to corroborate the returning memories. Latest conclusion after much as yet unfinished trauma: But there was much initial confusion, for not only were they not chronological, the dreams were shared among several, we unable to tell who originated, who eavesdropped.

Most of us had mystery about our beginnings, and some dream sequence participants either died, or could be ruled out as the Paladin. I won't continue my "predecessors'" policy of hiding the Paladin's identities--there's little point after my esteemed ancestor "the deathless one", a. From the first nexus, he was the repentant version of Cain, and God-appointed protector of his people against the unrepentant one--Pelik-Qayin alias Frederick Monde, Albert Canon, several more High Kings, etc.

They two battled many times think Joshua and the Amalekite king, Thor and Odin, numerous depositions of Ireland's High King with extreme prejudice, etc. This is not reincarnation, but regeneration, similar to what the regrow cocktail does to trigger cells to stem status and restore a severed leg, just a wee tad more dramatic.

This most recent half-century plus has been sorta the other way around, though I cottoned to Samadeya before I did to myself. Initially I worried that, despite events, Pelik might read this material in translation, and return to Hibernia when the century for their wager had expired in to attack. But Lucas convinced us he'd altered the game. Besides, I've learned my lessons and fully trust the Lord of Heaven will deliver me--through death yet again, as he sees fit. The two Qayins had by modern times a six millennia existence, dwarfing my mere eighty plus per mille of that span I currently recall.

I cannot shake the evil suspicion that when I discover what happened in my most recent reset, I'll also learn the details of , and how far back I really go. Cleopatra, Queen of Sheba, Mary, Ruth, or Sorry, I shouldn't verbalize fantasies. Samadeya is little help in sorting this out, though I am obviously his descendant--exactly how so remains unclear as I dictate this to Aileen over the ML ed. Metalibrary , for he claims he first had ken of me as Lilian Paladin in the early s and neither he nor she knew anything of me before that.

Can't tell if he's truthing. After all, he was tight with Ireland's two greatest modern prevaricators--Jack Devereaux and His Donalship Sean Reilly--and they were amateurs by comparison. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Mar 20, Sandy rated it it was amazing Shelves: His books are complicated to start off with, but once you get to know who's who, they are fantastic and you can't wait to find out what happens to them all.

As well as an appreciative reader, I also published this book only accepted because I liked it: Robin Brenchley rated it it was amazing Sep 04, Sally rated it liked it Dec 07, Bernie rated it really liked it Oct 01, Rick Sutcliffe rated it it was amazing Apr 27, Rick Sutcliffe rated it really liked it Apr 27, Will marked it as to-read Jan 09, There are no discussion topics on this book yet.

Prior to his academic career, he taught secondary school for twelve years in Langley, BC. Sutcliffe represents Canada on international computing standards committees and Richard J. Sutcliffe represents Canada on international computing standards committees and has published a text in computing science, written one on ethical and social issues in technology, and has authored more than fifty articles and reviews in a variety of trade and technical publications.

Worlds of the Timestream: The Interregnum, Book 7: The Throne, Book 4: Paladin or Time out of Heart

He has been a columnist for several magazines and newspapers. He coined the terms "New Renaissance", "Metalibrary", "concinnity", "Fourth Civilization" and "wired campus", has been a leader in electronic publication, and has been active on the Internet since the s. He has also been an invited speaker at numerous churches, educational and computing conferences, and technical symposia at local, national, and international levels.

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