Kent Silverhill's Worlds

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The Persistence of Poison

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Author: Kent Silverhill

Spurred on by a Dragon

The grey stones of Castle Silverhill glisten in the midday sun. I’m sitting at a small picnic table in the courtyard outside the kitchen waiting for Grimmon to bring me my lunch. A large umbrella I’d borrowed from a pub garden a few worlds ago, provides pleasant shade while I admire the scenery on the other side of the moat.

Yesterday we arrived in a landscape like something out of a painting by Constable. In the distance, a patchwork of fields stretches to the horizon, but closer to us there are no signs of civilisation, apart from a muddy track winding past a stand of beech trees near the moat. The castle has a knack for emerging from the enchanted dimensions far enough away from towns and villages so as not to cause a fuss. And the way it blends itself into the countryside when it materialises makes it look like it’s been there for hundreds of years.

I heave a sigh. It’s not a bad existence, on the whole. Although getting the Post Office to deliver my letters can be a little problematic. The only ones that arrive without fail are bills, usually printed in red and threatening to send bailiffs around. And, once a week, a pamphlet urging me to buy pizza from a takeout place that promises to deliver within twenty minutes. I’m tempted to try it to see how they’ll manage the inter-dimensional barriers, but the pictures of the pizzas, with their lurid colours and unidentifiable toppings, puts me off.

My attention is grabbed by something moving in the sky.

What I’d thought was a large bird, turns out to be a dragon. And it’s flying straight towards us.

“Perhaps we should go inside,” says a voice at my elbow.

Grimmon was standing next to me, a plate laden with sandwiches in his hands, staring at the dragon, his greenish brow creased in a frown. Maybe it’s a goblin thing, but even in his old-fashioned buckled shoes, he can move in eerie silence. It is quite unsettling, and he knows I don’t like it when he creeps up on me.

I hide my annoyance by being flippant. “Oh, don’t be such a ninny. I’m sure it’s friendly.”

At that moment, the dragon screeches like a hundred bagpipes in a mud-wrestling pit.

I jump up, snatch the plate from Grimmon, and hurry into the kitchen.

Seconds later the courtyard is engulfed in fire. The picnic table, chairs and umbrella burst into flames.

The dragon screams. A long and warbling wail, as though the creature is saying something.

“Ah,” says Grimmon, who must have been on my heels when I ran inside. “It’s complaining you haven’t finished the next book in your Hollow series.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Too busy to let everyone know there’s been a delay?” said Cook.

She had probably been standing sideways when I ran into the kitchen, for I hadn’t seen her, but as she spoke she turned to face me. Her apron, sharp-featured face and black hair were dusted with flour, her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and her hands were caked with dough. She looks perfectly normal from the front, but due to a backfiring spell (which I may have cast, but I’m not sure she knows that), she is two-dimensional and vanishes when she’s sideways-on.

“All right.” I sink into a chair. “It’s taking longer than it should… I know that. The trouble is, I’ve been too busy writing the next Daphne Mayne book. It’ll probably be a few months late. I’m doing my best.”

Cook and Grimmon both snort at the same time.

I pretend I didn’t notice. “May I eat my lunch now?”

February 27, 2023
Connecting with my muse

“You seem to be of the opinion,” said Grimmon, “that thinking too hard sprains the brain.”

He really does talk like that. Goblins can be just as pompous as the rest of us.

“Actually,” I said. “I am thinking. I’m connecting with my muse.”

I’d been writing all morning and was taking a break outside, leaning on the battlement at the top of the castle wall overlooking the moat, gazing at the world beyond.

The tips of Grimmon’s ears wobbled. “Your muse? Don’t make me laugh. You’re not thinking, you’re procrastinating.”

“I’ll have you know, the words have been flowing onto the page lately.” I waved my hand like I was conducting an orchestra. “And I’m pleased with what I’ve written.”

“Yeah, right.” Grimmon sniffed and scuffed the sole of his shoe on a flagstone. “Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that. What I wanted-”

At that moment there was a loud bang.

As one, we turned our heads to the building housing Castle Silverhill’s laboratory. A column of smoke billowed from a window, staining the clear blue sky a delicate shade of mauve.

“Trewla!” I yelled, and ran down the steps to the courtyard below. A minute later, I was wading through the debris littering the laboratory’s floor, coughing as my lungs filled with smoke.

“Trewla! Where are you?”

“Over here,” she said, raising her head above a stained workbench and standing up. She was holding a dustpan and brush. Her hair was a wild, tangled mess, and her face and clothes were covered in soot. “What on earth’s the matter?”

“The explosion. I thought…” I clamped my mouth shut and shook my head.

“Oh, that. I was just a little too heavy handed with the fairy dust. Nothing to worry about.” She patted down her hair.

“Well, be careful next time.” If I sounded gruff it was due to the dust coating my throat.

I felt a tugging at my sleeve, and looked down to see Grimmon gazing up at me.

“Not now, Grimmon,” I said.

“It’s important. I’ve got a painting for you.”

And here it is: a scene from Daphne Mayne and the Goblin Quest where Daphne is crossing a magically created bridge over a chasm and the bridge’s guardian begins to materialise.

January 13, 2023
Grimmon’s New Book Covers

There’s a bone-aching chill in the air as I stare at the landscape over the battlements of Castle Silverhill. It isn’t a pleasant sight, what with a blood moon coating the surrounding dunes in crimson and burnishing the still surface of the moat gently eroding the castle’s foundations.

I don’t like the look of the desert, and I haven’t been outside during the day since the castle materialised here. The heat makes the stones groan worse than usual.

The section of moat I can see when I lean over the wall looks like it might clot at any moment. Even the swirling wavelets caused by a tentacle breaking the surface roll away like they’re thicker than water.

Only a handful of stars glitter in the velvet sky. I turn away and brush my fingers over the mortar, loosening a fist-sized chunk which falls on my foot.

I hadn’t meant to do that. I know the ancient masonry is slowly crumbling, but that doesn’t make the pain in my injured toe any less acute.

I yelp, and with a low rumble, a chimney stack in the distant east wing topples onto a rooftop.

It wasn’t always like this.

When my great-great-great-great-grandfather built the place, the castle used to stay in one spot, as large, fortified buildings tend to do.

According to legend, a century after the castle was built, the lord of the castle at the time, Geoffrey, stole a book of spells from a wizard named Wenzel who had stayed overnight while on his way to Tintagel.

Geoffrey wasn’t known for his caution, and despite his less-than-firm grasp of thaumaturgic principles, couldn’t wait to try out one of the many spells between the book’s covers. While leafing through his ill-gotten prize to choose a spell he liked the look of, a word or two from each page caught his eye. Not being the most literate of readers, he mumbled them out loud.

Forty pages in, he’d said enough to inadvertently cast a spell.

One that had never been cast before because it hadn’t existed until Geoffrey accidentally created it.

And what a spell it turned out to be.

It cursed the entire castle to an endless existence of world hopping. Every fortnight, more or less, the castle – and everyone in it – moves to another world.

As you can imagine, the nomadic nature of Castle Silverhill has its drawbacks. For example, it makes catching a bus home rather awkward. Well, that’s if we’re in a world where there are buses.

And don’t get me started on postal services… To my boundless annoyance, the only letters that get pushed through my letterbox are tax demands, invoices, and bills. Some clearly have been in the postal system for hundreds of years, written as they are by hand on folded parchment sealed by large blobs of red wax imprinted with coats of arms.

But, I suppose, the biggest issue is that not all worlds are friendly. Some are downright hostile. You never know what the next world is going to be like, so it’s not like you can prepare.

Apart from being too hot, the desert world we’re in at the moment hasn’t come up with any nasty surprises.

Yet.

We’ve only been here two days, after all.

I sigh and trudge down the spiral stairs to my studio.

Grimmon’s there, waiting for me. His pointy ears quiver when I walk in and make my way to my desk, pretending I haven’t seen him. Goblins hate to be ignored, Grimmon more than most.

“I’ve finished changing the book covers,” he says. I suppress a smile at the testy note in his voice.

“What?” I say, raising my eyebrows as though seeing him for the first time.

His cheeks flush a dark shade of green. He slaps a leather folder on my desk and stalks out of the room, scuffing his boots on the rug as he goes. He knows that gets under my skin.

I wait until he’s left before I eagerly grab the folder and view his handiwork.

And here they are. New covers for the books so far in my Hollow series:

May 31, 2022
The Chronicles Map

A cold wind gusts out of the night and whistles along the battlements of Castle Silverhill. It spatters icy raindrops against the leaded windows and sets them rattling in their casements. Tentacles of grey mist ooze from the moat and drift around the keep, probing the ancient stones for cracks and crevices, openings it can slink through to chill the hearts of those inside.

A movement catches my eye and I turn my attention to the painting I acquired decades ago, a work crafted in oils depicting the entrance to the dungeons.

The brushstrokes move, showing the heavy door to the cells opening and a person of a rather unsavoury nature emerging. Down there, along with the rats and a peculiar luminous fungus, a goblin called Grimmon has made his home.

You know how it is: you pop out to the shops for a loaf of bread and come home to find a goblin has moved into your cellar. Only, in my case, my cellar is less a single, dank room and more a warren of underground chambers, which I like to refer to as the dungeons. A vein on Grimmon’s temple throbs and he clenches his jaw whenever I call them that. He says it makes him sound like a criminal. Well, he might be for all I know.

The view in the painting moves as Grimmon, a great leather-bound volume tucked under his arm, walks to the steps. He wipes the slime from his feet on a mat, not because I asked him to – he’s quick to tell me – but because he doesn’t want to expose the sentient slime to my unwholesome personage. With clean feet he trudges up the seven flights of stone steps to the floor where a dim corridor, ill lit by guttering torches, leads to the studio where I toil. I’m hunched over a board embossed with letters of the alphabet. A glowing flat rectangle of crystal, filled with words, floats before me.

The goblin enters and brushes the wispy hairs of his forelock out of his eyes.

“It is done,” he says. His gaze strays to the painting. But he’s too late. It reverted to a still life of a dead mouse and a wedge of mouldy cheese the moment he entered my studio.

“All of it? The curly bits in the corners too?” I say.

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

Grimmon frowns. “Yes, I’m finished.”

“No.” I wag a finger at him. “I thought I told you to address me as Your Magnificence.”

“I didn’t think you were being serious. I mean, what kind of conceited idiot calls himself that?”

He’s nettled me, but I conceal it with a huff which I hope he’ll interpret as me brushing his insult aside because he’s not important enough for me to be concerned about what he thinks.

It’s stalemate and for the space of half a dozen heartbeats we stare at one another.

“Look, do you want to see it or not?” he says at last.

“Oh… um, yes. Please.”

He thumps the book down on my desk and opens it at the page he’s been working on.

And here it is:

Map of Wydoria
This map of Wydoria is designed to be printed on A4 paper, or to be viewed on a screen.

It shows the Land of Wydoria, shut off from the rest of the world by an enchanted Hedge, along with its major towns and cities, and the location of the home of each of the evil rulers of the country, together known as the Consistorium.

Also lookout for the Elvish city of Luillan to the north of the Hedge, and the route Aleihra’s travel-spell took when it started carrying Daphne and the elf from Daphne’s village of Feybridge to Luillan.

Published: April 10, 2022
Download Map271 Downloads

May 18, 2022
Demons, Hollow Worlds and Suns

I’m lying awake in bed, unable to get to sleep. It’s those graveyard hours, the wee hours after midnight when the veil between worlds grows thin. Sharp, blood-encrusted claws of demons are scratching at the window and a long, pale arm, bony fingers tipped with cracked, yellow nails, reaches out from under my bed.

Cold sweat beads my brow. Why I didn’t pick an easier world to build than Hollow?

A hollow world sounds great, right? It’s unusual, interesting and fits nicely with being a world nobody can ever leave.

In my head, it’s almost complete. The inside surface, on which everyone lives, is a little bigger than Earth’s surface, and it has seas, continents, islands, mountains, plains and… well, you know, everything that will make a great backdrop to set my stories in: things like deserts, plains, jungles, forests, tundra, glaciers and all that icy stuff we have at the poles.
All Hollow needs is a tiny sun located in the dead-centre of the hollow globe, and there you are: all the light and warmth a world needs.

But by then, the demons have opened a window, and they’re in the room. One, slightly bigger than the others, says, “How will night happen in your hollow world? The sun would be hanging there in the centre shining all hours.”

I think a bit and answer, “It could switch off at night. You know, like a light bulb.”

“Then… it would be night all over the world at the same time?”

“Yes.”

The demon smiles in triumph. The other demons behind him chortle. They wink, and their glowing yellow eyes are like tiny suns switching on and off.

“Ha! Your world would freeze every night.” He shakes his head, and his necklace of finger-bones rattles like a hundred death-knells. “And even though the sun switches on again the next morning, by the time your world thaws, it will be night again. Doomed to eternal ice.” A ball of smoke puffs from his mouth and fades into nothingness. “So much for your ideas.”

“But… What if…?” My voice trails to a halt.

He was right. Half the world needed to be day while the other half was night. But how?

The pale arm reaching up from under the bed is groping over the covers towards me. I slap it and it stops moving. I get the feeling it’s watching me.

“Ah!” I smack my fist into my palm. “Only half the sun will turn off at a time.”

“Don’t be stupid.” The demon rolled his eyes. “You can’t turn off half a sun.”

“Oh yes, I can. Technically, the sun won’t actually turn off. There’s a shield curved around half of it. The shield rotates slowly so that darkness – nighttime – moves around the world. One rotation every twenty-four hours. Half the world will be in light and warmth while the other half is in darkness.”

I hold my breath while I watch the demon. His pupils narrow to slits, like a cat’s.

His lips peel back from his fangs. “I thought you wanted glaciers and frozen north and south poles. The sun will pour the same amount of heat across every inch of whichever part is in daylight.”

“Well, obviously there’s magic,” I mumble. “Magic that sucks the heat out of some areas… Freezes them. That sort of thing.”

“You poor fool.” The demon makes no effort to hide his glee. “Your readers aren’t going to trust you if you merely throw magic at every problem to solve it. Admit it. You’ve failed.”

Pale under-the-bed-fingers wrap around my wrist. I yank away my arm.

A random spark of inspiration from the cosmos pings into my brain.

“The sun won’t be round. It will be rod-shaped… like one of those tubes from a fluorescent light, but shorter. The regions directly under the sun will get the full light and warmth of the sun. A person standing there looking at the sun will see it fully, but if they travel to the side, the further they go, the shorter the sun will appear to them, and the less light and heat they’ll experience. It’s like if you look at a baseball bat from the side, you see the whole thing, but if you hold it up with one of its ends towards you, all you see is a tiny part of it, a disc.”

The demon looks flummoxed for a second, then his eyebrows lift.

Before he can speak, I say, “Don’t ask about seasons. The rod-sun solves that problem too. If it tilts a few degrees one way, then the other way over the course of a year, it will bring different amounts of warmth to each hemisphere in turn. So when it’s winter in one hemisphere, it will be summer in the other!”

I’ve finally got it. It’s my turn to gloat.

The demon leans forward and seizes my throat. His claws sink into my skin. “Nobody will believe it, idiot!”

I wake up with my head under my pillow. Blurry eyed, I reach for my laptop and begin to type.

January 16, 2022
Magic – Mundane or Mysterious?

When I’m writing stories in my Hollow series, I try to make some of the magic used in Hollow pretty much run of the mill as far as the locals are concerned.

It’s kind of like we are today with electricity. We take it for granted that we can plug in a lamp, or a hairdryer, and it lights up or blows hot air (preferably not both). But three hundred years ago, your electrical appliance would have seemed like magic to anyone witnessing you blow-drying your curly locks. There would be a mob bearing pitchforks and flaming torches outside your house, coming to drag you off to the nearest bonfire before you’d even taken out your curlers.

Like electricity is to us, some magic is rather humdrum to the residents of Hollow. Not all of it, of course, because there’s some out of the ordinary magic there too. Nevertheless, they can make use of sympanometry without the slightest curiosity about how it works.

Back in our own non-fiction world, we accept that there are things we don’t understand. For example, you don’t need to know how a microchip works in order to use a computer, or how an engine works when you’re driving to your local supermarket at breakneck speed, late at night, to buy a card for your mother whose birthday you’ve only just remembered.

That’s how it is with sympanometry (the popular-in-Hollow branch of magic based on shapes).

A case in point is Krislemeen, the prickly, easy-to-offend leader of a bunch of rebels, who has no need to understand the principles of sympathetic shapes in order for her to use sympanometry to execute anyone unlucky enough to have offended her.

In the third book, A Taste of Steel, Drome rubs Krislemeen up the wrong way – as he does with almost everyone – and finds himself on the receiving end of the rebel leader’s ire.

I won’t give too much away, suffice to say, he’s only go himself to blame, which isn’t much of a comfort when he’s strapped atop a pile of explosives, waiting for the fun to begin.

For Krislemeen, the magic she’s using to trigger the explosives is rather mediocre. Drome, on the other hand – especially at that point – doesn’t feel sympanometry is boring and commonplace at all.

I’m sure you’d agree if you were in the same situation.

Well, you would, wouldn’t you?

December 22, 2021
How Low Can You Go?

When I was planning Flight of the Gazebo, the first book in the Hollow series, I wondered how the villagers of Amblesby would react when their entire village was magically relocated to a strange hollow world. Surely everyone would pull together, join forces to overcome the terrible situation in which they found themselves? I pondered this point for a long time and came to the conclusion that most people would look out for one another, support those in need. But I couldn’t help thinking there would be a few individuals who’d try to take advantage, try to make a profit or grab power.

Was I being cynical to think anyone would do that?

The Hollow series is humorous, and therefore extreme behaviour is the order of the day, so I had no qualms creating a few self-serving characters who couldn’t give a damn about their fellow villagers. But even I was surprised when a few years later the coronavirus pandemic struck and I saw how low some people will stoop to make a quick buck.

Take the case of Matt and Noah Colvin of Chattanooga, Tennessee for example. Seeking to cash in on the panic buying sweeping the world in the early days of the pandemic, they went on a road trip and bought 17,700 bottles of hand sanitiser. Then they tried to sell them on Amazon for up to $70 a bottle. Before long, Amazon closed their online shop, and the Tennessee attorney general, keen to stop this sort of behaviour, released a statement saying “This is a time where we have to focus on helping our neighbors, not profiting from them.”

I’m sure though, that Jeremy Wainscott or Gerald Montgomery-Jones would admire the Colvin brothers. I’m sure others do too, but the backlash against the brothers’ behaviour shows there’s hope for us humans yet.

Or is there?

This is a topic I’ll continue to explore in future books of the Hollow series. Mwahahaha…

November 7, 2021
How do you Measure Up?

One of those things we probably don’t think too hard about when we’re reading a fantasy book is what measurement systems are used in the world created by the author. There are exceptions, but many, if not most, high fantasies are set in worlds where the technology peaks at horses, carts and swords, so we’re more than happy for characters to talk about how many “leagues” they have travelled because it sounds like an authentic historical unit of measure. This is despite many of us (including me) not really knowing how long a league actually is.

Okay, I’ve just googled it – in the English-speaking world, one league is three miles (4.83km), based on roughly how far a person could walk in an hour. But could be anything from 2.4 to 4.6 miles depending on which European country a fantasy book’s history is based on. And it seems almost all fantasy novels in the English language are set in worlds with European-like history. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong!

Now, you’re probably thinking, “Kent, what are you waffling about?”

Well, it occurred to me when I was preparing to write the Hollow series that the villagers of Amblesby would not only be thrown into an entirely new world, but also a bunch of new languages and measuring systems.

As you know, if you’ve read the series, the people of the magically created world of Hollow come from many different places around the universe, so the way they communicate, dress and so on will be more colourful, varied and confusing to newcomers than if everyone at a Comic-Con gatecrashed a football match.

Other authors have tackled the issue of different languages by either ignoring it and having everyone speak English, or having a magical (or scientific) way of translating in real time.

Of the latter, probably the most well-known is Douglas Adams’ babel fish in his Hitchhiker’s Guide books.

In the case of Hollow, the creators of the hollow world – the mysterious Progenitors – were naively optimistic and wanted everyone to get along. What better way than having all the different intelligent species they’d brought to Hollow being able to understand one another?

But understanding doesn’t only apply to languages.

If you found yourself in Hollow and asked a garflung how far it was to the nearest shop, it might point down a track and say, “Two aiklongs away, in that direction.”

Without a way of automagically converting aiklongs to miles, you’d have no idea as you walked away from your three-eyed acquaintance whether you’d reach the shop in an hour, a day or a week.

Naturally the progenitors wanted to avoid situations like that, so they provided mindlearns which are inserted into the heads of everyone in Hollow. Mindlearns do all that finicky translation and conversion stuff without you having to think about it. That is once you’ve got used to having what feels like a spoonful of lumpy porridge magically inserted into your skull.

However, despite the progenitors’ good intentions, just being able to communicate with one another doesn’t mean everyone’s going to get along.

Not too different from our own world, then.

A Short Lesson in Mindlearn Node Recognition

If you don’t already have a mindlearn inside your head, then approach one of the many nodes scattered around Hollow, and touch the trunk. One of the stubby branches will extend, smack you on the forehead, and instantly insert a mindlearn.

You won’t feel a thing. Well, a little dizzy for a few seconds. But, apart from that, you’ll be fine. I promise.

Best of all, you’ll be able to understand any language in Hollow.

Come on, it’s worth it. Touch the node. Go on. Do it.

September 12, 2021
Sayings We Take for Granted

What with the Northern Hemisphere’s summer lurking in the wings, I thought I’d take a look at a something I’ve often heard but puzzled over.

In the UK, there’s a saying Ne’er cast a clout till May be out. I learned this from my parents when I was a child, and they told me it meant “summer only starts once May is over”. For years I took that at face value, not realising they had simplified it for my young brain.

Even so, I often wondered what cast a clout meant, but I never thought about it when I was in a library or had an encyclopedia in my hands, and it wasn’t until the internet appeared on the scene that I looked it up.

In Old English one meaning of “clout” was cloth or clothing, and “cast”, still today, can mean to remove or discard.

So, there you have it: Never remove any warm clothing until May is over.

That got me wondering… How many other sayings do I take for granted, but don’t know the real meaning of?

One expression that sprang to mind immediately was a square meal.

We’re taught as children to feel satisfied after a square meal, so what exactly is a square meal?

Well, it turns out “square” in this sense means “honest”, “equitable” or “straightforward”. It’s like the meaning of “square” in the expression “fair and square”.

Interestingly, there is a myth that the term “square meal” comes from the Royal Navy and originated in the days when sailors were served meals on square wooden plates called trenchers. If someone informs you this is what a square meal means, you can wag your finger disparagingly and put them right 🙂

A phrase which probably does originate from the Royal Navy is toe the line.

It’s thought the most likely source was from the era of wooden ships when sailors would line up along the seams of the deck planks, with their toes touching the seam.

Fascinating stuff. Do you have any phrases or sayings you’ve used for years without knowing where they come from? Share them in the comments section below.

May 11, 2021
Whale of a time

As the days grow cooler here in the southern hemisphere, whales are returning to the waters around Cape Town. During the summer months it’s rare to see a whale in these parts, but come autumn their blows are a regular sight off the coast.

I was fascinated to see an unusually shaped whale blow a few days ago. Instead of the normal single jet of what looks like steam erupting from the water, there was a twin, v-shaped jet.

Thanks to the power of google, I’ve learned that this is the blow of a Southern Right whale. Southern Rights average 15m (50 feet) in length and weigh a bathroom-scale-denting 60 tons.

As I stood watching, I saw more and more twin blows in the same area, sometimes more than one at a time, which meant there must have been a whole load of them. They were too far away for me to see their backs when they surfaced, but I felt privileged to have witnessed their blows all the same.

Chronicles of Wydoria progress

While working on the next Chronicles of Wydoria book, Daphne Mayne and the Hounds of Magic, I took some time out to paint a scene where Daphne stands before the Castle of the Consistorium.

I find it helps me focus better on a story when I’ve created some artwork to do with the story or the series. I don’t always put the pictures I create on my website because they are often just quick sketches, but I went the whole hog on this one and created a finished piece.

I use Affinity Photo for my book covers and other artwork (it’s a fraction of the price of Photoshop and it’s a one-off payment rather than Photoshop’s monthly subscription model). There are tons of tutorials and other resources on the web for Affinity Photo too. You can even follow a Photoshop tutorial and, with very little effort, work out how to complete the steps in Affinity Photo.

I’m not affiliated to Serif (the creators of Affinity Photo) in any way and don’t receive anything for promoting them, it’s just that I like the product very much.

Soon I’ll have to get around to adding a dedicated section for Daphne’s world on this site!

April 13, 2021