Hurray! Here’s day three of the Saboteur Release Party! This is where I get to post all sorts of weird stuff about the making of the books and the creation of the world and … yeah … all that fun stuff. Yesterday we covered Trenna, since she seems to be everyone’s favorite, and now I’m going to cover Nelek Vronat Dyngannon, the warring Prince and Trenna’s lover-turned-husband.
I actually stole Nelek from a different book that I had written. It was a “trunk novel”, or a novel that I wrote for practice and should never been seen by anyone ever. One of these days I might burn the trunk just to be safe. But anyway, Nelek was actually the younger Prince in this “trunk novel” and he was so very complicated that I actually wanted the heroine of said trunk novel to fall in love with him instead of the main character. I thought that was a pretty strong indicator that there was something more to him and so, after I had tossed that novel into the trunk and vowed never to look at it again, I decided that something was salvagable from him and put him into the world of Dyngannon.
No, it’s not coincidence that he’s known as the “Warring Prince” in Kiavana. In order for Trenna to really work, she needed someone with power and fortitude and, well, general oomph to him to play opposite in the book. Someone who could get into as much, if not more, trouble than she could. Someone who was a balance to her reckless, often brash self. Thus, we have Nelek Vronat Dyngannon, grandson of King Porrex Dyngannon. (The royalty thing was his idea. Apparently in both versions of Nelek — the trunk novel and the novels that are decent enough for the general public — he had to be royalty.)
Now then … Nelek really gets to shine in Saboteur. Meaning, he gets to prove that he’s just as gritty and kick-butt as his wife when he has to be. In fact, SPOILER ALERT, the man gets to save her life in the first chapter. ((Pfft, like that’s much of a spoiler. It would be an awful short book if I let her die right there in the first chapter.))
I searched high and low for a snippet to give you here. The one that I am going to post was in the original manuscript. It got edited out somewhere around the 4th edit of the book for continuity reasons and … uh … word count reasons because I was far beyond my 120 thousand word limit. This scene is actually referenced in the second chapter of Sedition and it’s a mite too long to post in its entirety, so I’ve cut it down to a bite-sized snippet.
Background — Nelek and Brenson are children in this scene. They’re at the Temple of the Ebony Blade and were undergoing sword instruction from their mentor Sir Bedvar when the army sort of crashed the party in search of the (surprise, surprise) Ebony Blade —
***
“His Highness King Goddard has no command over the sword,” Bedvar’s voice reached them. “Only her Majesty Queen Auliere can request it.”
“Her Majesty the Queen is dead,” the lead man spat on Bedvar’s boot.
Nelek gasped, put hands over his brother’s ears, though he knew he had failed to protect Brenson from the harsh words.
“Mama?” Brenson croaked and peered up at him, looking for him to deny it.
“Sh!” Nelek shook his head at his younger sibling. “She’s not dead,” he stated firmly. “We would know it.”
Turning his attention back to Bedvar, Nelek prayed inwardly that he was somehow right. Bedvar had turned slightly at the announcement, not really looking up at the wall where Nelek and Brenson hid, but in that general direction. There was a great force of emotion through the Knights face before a steely resolve straighten him and forced him to look back at the army before him.
“Then the sword is in the command of His Highness Prince Nelek.”
“The sword is in the command of the Crown!”
No further words were needed. Bedvar drew his blade just as the army surged forward. The knight took five of them down before falling. His sword glinted brilliantly in the sun, slashing and arching in the familiar movements of battle. Nelek watched, fighting for breath, as a mace came down hard across Bedvar’s head and the man dropped like stone. Finding his voice, Nelek let out an anguished shout that mingled with the clash of weapons against the barred temple door.
****
There you go! That’s my snippet for Nelek, straight from my notes and archives, full of cliche’s and horrible grammar and everything.
AJMaguire 