Joely Sue Burkhart

Welcome to the show “Every Character is the Star of His Own Story,” brought to you in order to create more satisfying secondary characters.  The star of the show this week is Varne, Khul’s nearest Blood, from the Shanhasson trilogy. 

You’ve met Varne before in several of the Shanhasson Friday Snippets.  He asked to stop by the other day for an interview.  Evidently I’ve messed up his entire character arc, and he felt the need to set the record straight.  

Of course my co-host and Muse, Gregar, couldn’t let Varne drone on and on endlessly without putting me in a coma, so he stops by for a little while, too, to antagonize his old friend slash arch enemy.  Something Gregar does very, very well.   

Fine Print:  The host makes no warranties as to the validity of the character’s statements herein.  I can neither confirm nor deny future impact on Story.  No characters were maimed in the recording of this interview either, no matter what he may claim later.

 

Interview:

My hand trembled as I flipped open my notebook and picked up the closest pen. I couldn’t help it. This character always made me nervous.

Varne, Khul’s nearest Blood, stared back at me. His face was chiseled planes of granite, hard, unyielding, his eyes dark, his mouth grim. “I’m pleased to be here this day.”

I blinked to hide my surprise. This was pleased? Varne was rather like Eeyore most days, so perhaps this was the happiest he ever got. “Um, thanks. Why did you…” I almost said demand, but I couldn’t afford to lose control of this interview so quickly, “ask to meet me today?”

Varne leaned forward, his eyes locked on my face. “I have to set the record straight. Your accounting of my kae’valda is lacking.”

“Okay,” I replied slowly. “Go right ahead.”

“You are going to take notes, aye?”

“Aye,” I tried not to be sarcastic, honestly, but it was so very…Varne…of him to think I wouldn’t be able to remember this if I didn’t write it down.

“He’s not here, is he?” His voice dripped disapproval, his knuckles whitening where he gripped his thighs.

“Who, Gregar?” Just the mention of his name made the other warrior flinch. My lips twitched toward a smile but I forced my face smooth. Beneath the desk, I crossed the fingers on my left hand. “No, I sent him away. He won’t bother you today.”

You promised, I thought loudly, and I knew Gregar heard.

Varne released his fierce grip on his thighs and leaned back slightly in the chair. “Some have not told you the complete story.”

His eyes flickered toward the pen lying lax in my hand, so I tightened my fingers appropriately and put the tip to paper, waiting expectantly.

“I’m nearest Blood.”

“I know.”

“He’s not. He’s not even her nearest Blood.”

I had to close my eyes a moment so he wouldn’t see me rolling them. “I know.”

“When he was Kae’Had-Mangus, he nearly terminated Rhaekhar before he could claim the honor of becoming Khul of the Nine Camps of the Sha’Kae al’Dan.” Varne’s voice rumbled with menace, his hand dropping down to clutch the rahke on his hip. “I stopped him.”

“Really?” Hmmm, that wasn’t how Gregar remembered the story. “He says you didn’t even know he was there.”

“I knew. I should have killed him then. I didn’t know how much heartache he would cause Khul at the time, or I would have been honored to kill him.”

I didn’t think anybody could ever actually kill Gregar. I mean, he was already mostly dead anyway. All Death Riders were, and Gregar was a sight more than the everyday normal assassin. “Rhaekhar has no complaints with how Gregar performs as Blood or in his…”

Ooops. Varne’s cheeks flooded a dark red. This evidently wasn’t the appropriate line of questioning. So I skipped ahead to ask him something that had been bugging me a long time. “Why don’t you ever join the Death Riders? I mean, with your rahke skill, I always sort of assumed that’s where you’d end up after…”

I could swear I heard his teeth grinding together. Again, another sticky subject. He didn’t like to be reminded of any failure, let alone the greatest failure of all. Damn, this interview was a lot harder than I expected. Gregar wasn’t nearly this touchy.

Something cold trickled down my neck but I refused to shiver. I thought, Stop it, very hard and the cold disappeared. I forced my attention back to the warrior sitting before me.

Varne held his rahke cupped in his open palms, and he stared at the knife, his mouth twisted as though something had died on his tongue. “Never. I shall never be a Death Rider. How could you think such a thing?”

He’s afraid, the thought shimmered deep in my mind, not my own, but I knew it for truth. “Is it the killing?”

“Nay,” Varne whispered. A fine tremor began in his hands. “It’s the blood.”

“I’ve seen you kill before. I’ve seen you get blood on you. Surely–“

“Nay, not that blood.”

My teeth ached as though I’d bitten down on a strip of tinfoil. “Hers.”

I might as well have slapped him in the face. He bared his teeth in a vicious grimace, and this time, I welcomed the touch of cold on my neck, dripping down my back. I might need Gregar’s Shadow after all. “Shannari is not for you.”

“Good,” he bit the word off, his jaws so tight he could barely speak. “The last thing in this world I want is her. That was one of the most ridiculous ill-advised thoughts you ever had.”

Ouch. Agreed, though. “What do you want?”

His shoulders were shaking now, the tendons and muscles standing out in rigid lines down his arms. “I tried…” He drew a long, trembling breath, forcing the words out. “I tried to climb the Mountain. I stood at the base of the jagged slope and stared up at the top. Gregar had made it to the lake of fire. Why couldn’t I? I could do anything he could do.”

He dropped the rahke onto his memsha and buried his face in his hands. “I didn’t have to climb to the top. I couldn’t–“ With a snarl, he jerked his hands away from his face, raking his own flesh with his nails. His eyes were bubbling pools of death and self recrimination.

I reached out to him, thinking to comfort him, but something hard touched my neck, hovering over my jugular, a slight nick. Gregar didn’t want me touching the Blood, and I couldn’t disagree with that, either.

“Why do you hate him so much?” I whispered. “He never–“

“Don’t you understand?” Varne surged to his feet, the rahke gripped in his hand, his eyes black with murder. “He Sees, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it!”

“Sees what?” I hated sounded stupid, but I didn’t know if Varne was being deliberately vague or just obtuse. He wasn’t the sharpest rahke on the Plains, if you know what I mean. “What did you see?”

“I couldn’t!” He roared, his neck cording as he jerked the blade up over his head. “I couldn’t bear to See what I would do!”

His shoulders drooped as suddenly as he’d leapt out of his chair. Lowering his arm, he stared at the rahke in his hand. Stricken, he looked into my eyes, and I knew, then, exactly what he’d Seen on the Mountain. Until I’d climbed the Mountain myself, I’d never completely understood the real cost, the real sacrifice.

Blood was always the key, but without the heart’s full conviction, an ocean of blood would never be enough.

He’d Seen himself, his true self, and he couldn’t bear to look that deeply. Few could.

He most hates that which he fears in himself, Gregar’s voice echoed through my mind again. Varne hated the Shadowed Blood most of all.

“Don’t let me do it,” Varne whispered, the closest to begging I ever thought he’d get. “Kill me first.”

“We all have to do things we don’t want to do, that we regret, that we wish we could have done better or different. That’s part of,” I was going to say growing up, but changed it to “being a warrior.”

“Why show me such horrors if there’s nothing I can do to stop it?”

His voice sounded so forlorn that I tried to explain it to him one last time. “Because you can change it, you can stop it, but you’ve got to admit it first. Don’t you see? You had a chance to be her Ninth when she comes for help in book 3, but your own hatred planted a seed of Shadow in your heart instead. The choice was always yours.”

[Besides, Mykal as her Ninth is way cooler than Varne ever will be, at least my Beloved Sis thinks so. But that’s a character you shouldn’t know about yet.]

Varne still didn’t understand, and I didn’t know how to explain it to him. It was his culture, his belief, yet to see why he couldn’t die with honor would make him see the Shadow in his own heart that he refused to acknowledge. “I can’t simply kill you and make it all better.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

I pushed my chair closer to my desk and firmly turned my attention to my laptop. The current Road file waited, ready and open, and I burned to continue the story. “This interview is over now.”

“Coward.”

Clenching my jaws, I refused to even look at him. To think I wasted Clive Owen as inspiration for this jerk. “Go away, Varne, or–”

“What?” He sneered. “You’ll send your pet Shadowed Blood after me?”

I knew that’s what he wanted. He wanted Gregar to kill him so he could sit around bitching at me the rest of my life about how I’d screwed up his story. “No. Gregar’s too busy enjoying his heart’s desire to bother. If you don’t go away right this minute, I’m going to make you watch.”

“You wouldn’t.”

I set my fingers to the keyboard and typed, speaking out loud. “Varne walked…no stalked…into the tent, his face as grim as ever, and took his spot against the wall. ‘Enjoy the show,’ Shannari said sarcastically, and turned to the two warriors lying before her.”

I risked a quick flick of my gaze up to the steaming warrior standing beside my desk. Varne actually trembled with rage. Without a word, he slammed his rahke back into the sheath on his hip and stalked…yes, that was exactly the right word for him…out of the room.

Whew. I took a deep breath and rolled my shoulders.

“Do continue, Lady.” Gregar leaned down over me to read the screen, a curtain of sable hair sliding down to pool on my keyboard. “I beg you, read it aloud.”

“You need to be there,” I said, nodding at the screen. “I can’t write this scene without you.”

“Agreed, yet I must correct a slight mistake.” Laughing softly, he whispered in my ear. “Mine is bigger.”

I whirled around and shoved him in the chest. “Gregar!”

“My rahke, I meant my rahke.” He winked at me, his eyes dancing with shadowed mischief. “And my word is glide. I glided from the room.”

Oh yes indeed, he most certainly did. I turned back to the story and typed faster.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 5:01 am and is filed under Writing, My Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.