Wisdom's Kiss (97 page)

Lax is kind of like the United States of America, with a central leader governing a bunch of states of various sizes, structures, and ambitions. Unlike the USA, however, the states within Lax consist of kingdoms, duchies, counties, earldoms, baronies, independent cities (a critical feature of the Holy Roman Empire), and who knows what else, many with their own armies, and most with income structures based mostly on soaking whoever's hapless enough to pass through their little chunk of real estate. Sometimes these kingdoms and duchies and such revolt, overtly or more insidiously, and the emperor—a position that in Lax is hereditary, luckily; so there's not as much scrambling and backstabbing about who goes next—has the thankless job of trying to hold this all together. Rüdiger IV does a pretty darn good job, though he gets no credit for it, either in other
crises
, or from his
biographers
. In fact, I'm surprised his model hasn't been attempted in real life: venting aggression via circus competition seems just as macho and dangerous as warfare but a lot less expensive, not to mention safer for sundry innocent bystanders.

See also the
Gazetteer
on
Lax
and
Rigorus

More Author Commentary
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Dangers of Magic
>

Ben's Misbehavior
>

Edwig
>

Elemental Spells
>

Doppelschlâferin
>

Ancienne
>

Wizard Tower
>

A Note from the Author:
Wisdom's Kiss
grew in part from this earlier book and my musings about the old woman narrating
Princess Ben.
Who was she now? What would she be like as a grandmother? Although
Wisdom's Kiss
is in no way a sequel to
Princess Ben,
the two books do share several characters, place names and magical elements. Awareness of one will certainly enhance your enjoyment of the other, but that's true of almost all stories: the more you know, the more you relish the references. The
Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig
delights us because we're all so familiar with the other version.

Enhanced Materials Menu

Princess Ben
Excerpt: Dangers of Magic
>

Both Ben and Dizzy are quite hesitant to employ magic, not only from the
untimely death
of Queen Providence but also because of the violent punishment of any practitioners, or even suspected practitioners. Nonna Ben has long experience with the hazards of both witchcraft and broom flight, as this passage demonstrates.

Oh, how I longed to soar through the sky! Past the stars, across the moon, over sleeping Montagne and its flag-adorned turrets. Even as I dreamt of this rapture, my wiser side spoke against it. Rumors of witchcraft now burned across the country. Sheep on Ancienne had gone astray; a shepherd boy had not been seen in weeks; spirits with cloven feet tracked ash across the ballroom floor. As far as the truth went, I had seen the ballroom myself and the prints (well should I know) were only mice. Sheep had been disappearing from the mountain since time immemorial; rational men in rational times agreed the creatures must be tumbling into an unmarked ravine. As for the shepherd boy, I had no insights beyond the knowledge that I was in no way responsible.

Yet tempers were raw, and the castle's populace, tense over the impending ball and doubtless sensing in some intangible way the threat from Drachensbett, promised violence against anyone suspected of sorcery. Better to dart about my cell like a beetle trapped in a jar, and to enter the pantries only when my howling belly could bear hunger no more.

Excerpted from pages 55–57 of
Princess Ben: Being a Wholly Truthful Account of Her Various Discoveries and Misadventures, Recounted to the Best of Her Recollection, in Four Parts
by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company © 2008. Reprinted with permission.

More on the difficulty of incorporating magic into fiction
>

More excerpts from
Princess Ben
>