This story is the prequel to the Eoss trilogy. A chaos magician creates a servitor mare, the resourceful Heather, and other servitors to implement his grand vision of life and magic as a chessboard. The chaos Goddess Eris is one of the characters.
Three young flatmates seek help from the servitors, and we see them through Heather’s eyes as they grapple with the threat of being homeless. Heather learns and grows, and comes to realise what kind of life she wants.
Excerpt:
The magician sat before his laptop, his face and shoulders almost hidden by his abundant black, curly hair and a wild beard. He was writing the first instalment of The Blog of Balor.
I have named myself after my ancestor Balor, the hero of the giant race of ancient Ireland known as the Fomorians.
The Irish myths tell us that when Partholon, the first invader of Ireland landed, three hundred years after the Flood, the Fomorians were already there. How did they arrive there, and from where? It is not known. But it is significant that the Flood is mentioned, because some of those who lived in the time before the Flood were known as giants.
Likewise, the characters that come earliest in time in the Greek myths and the Norse myths were also called giants.
The giants in Greece were overthrown and succeeded by the Olympian pantheon. The giants in Scandinavia were overthrown and succeeded by the Norse pantheon. The giants in Ireland, the Fomorians, were overthrown and succeeded by the Tuatha de Danann, the people of Dana.
I have taken the name of Balor, and I have not been overthrown, nor have I been succeeded. I believe I am the greatest magician in Ireland today- a bold claim, I know, but I am hoping to prove it.
I ask the ravens as they pick worms from the peat, “are you descended from the Noah’s Ark raven?” and they reply, “we are the Morrigan’s.” No records have survived from the time of Balor, only a cycle of myths.
Balor was said to have a poisonous eye. He kept the eye closed when he was with his kin and opened it to destroy his enemies. I understand this well. My evil eye is legendary, and I have always been a sorcerer much feared. I can also relate to keeping the eye closed when I am with my kin, as my many friends will testify. I sit here now in solitude, in my humble home which overlooks a beautiful bay. I like to think of it as the place where my Fomorian ancestors first landed. From here I am about to launch my career as a techno -mage, anonymous and powerful on the internet. I will not say where I live, for I value my privacy. If you think you know the place, come stand outside the window and risk my poison eye.
***
Heather the servitor horse had been brought to Heather Bay by the Black King, the Black Knight and the Black Bishop. She had been taken there to be broken in.
“Tis a fine day to be training a racehorse, to be sure!” cried the Irish ticket seller, as they passed through Heather Bay station. He had ‘the sight,’ as his old mama called it, and could see the astral beings.
“Oh, she’s no racehorse,” replied the Black Bishop. “She is going to be a servant. Or should I say, a servitor? She is the prototype, and her creator’s next project will be Eoss. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s that chaos magic time-bending again.”
The ticket-seller looked puzzled and did not reply. The Black King and the Black Knight exchanged glances and smirked. They were all for this being a playful, fun assignment. After all, they had begun as simple servitors themselves, very similar to their new horse, and had only now evolved into ‘the terrible three’ or ‘the three musket ears’ or whatever name their creator fancied for them at the time.
In chaos magic, a servitor is an artificial familiar created by a magician to serve some magical purpose. In time, and through contact with multiple human beings, the servitor evolves into an egregore and then possibly into a minor god. While it is still a servitor, it needs an energy source to survive. There is disagreement amongst chaos magicians as to whether the servitor acquires a soul, and if so, when the soul appears. But by the end of the process, it is alive-unless the magician destroys it. It is rather like a golem.
The three chess pieces preferred wherever possible to be informal, with occasional forays into an educational address when they took on the role of teachers. The Black Bishop had similar tastes to the magician who had made them for he loved studying abstract ideas, and he was usually the one to give esoteric teachings, in keeping with his ecclesiastical title.
The Black King was their leader, so naturally he was designated as the chessboard king. He had less to say than the other two, but when he did speak it was to give an overall view of events, and directions on how to proceed.
“We mustn’t scare the likes of that ticket officer,” said the Black Knight, as they moved across the fields towards the bay. He was a little shy of humans and wouldn’t have wanted to speak to the human himself.
“He’s not scared- he doesn’t care. Eyes front,” responded the Black King. “We’ve nearly reached the bay.”
The Black Bishop smirked again as he took in the sweeping vista of Heather Bay. Its namesake heather only grew up to the edge of the surrounding grassland, and then it gave way to ochre sand which drifted in heaps interspersed with driftwood, stones and blue and white shells. The tide was out, the waves lapping eagerly at the flattened sand on the distant edge of the beach. Gulls turned and cried as they glided over the calm water and seemed to float on the air currents.
Heather the servitor horse surveyed the scene with pleasure, for she wanted to graze in the field that ran up to the edge of the beach. She was designed to eat and drink like a physical horse to get her energy. After that, she wanted to gallop across the bay. She imagined kicking up the sand in clouds at the front of the beach, then the wet feeling on her hooves as she reached the flat part nearest to the sea. Her hooves would sink slightly in the sand, leaving prints.
