Monday, June 11, 2012
Minor
Keys No. 3
Our next minor
character is the physician who tends the king in the City of White Stones (I turned
the pages of Azimuth Book 1, just a moment ago and this character caught my eye
– thus, I am going to write about him as a stream of consciousness now and see where we get.) It is here
that the young Magus’ inherent power to heal first comes to the fore as he and
his father are drawn to the court of the city. It is also one of the earliest examples of CSI in human history! The boy examines the king’s
wound, the result of an arrow strike.
-The
tip in your husband’s body has been sawn from a poisoned hunting arrow, he told
the queen, -The kind of arrow
which is used to slow the death of wild beasts. The shaft you can see here has
no clean break. The royal physician removed its metal head and then inserted
the tip of a corrupted hunting arrow in its place. Your husband would have
recovered quickly enough from his wound had it not been for the introduction of
the poison. This man chose his venom carefully to allay suspicion. The shaft
would have been thrown away and no-one would have suspected him by the time the
king died. If another physician had investigated his body it would have been
unlikely that he would find such a small tip. If he did then it would have been
seen as an understandable oversight on the part of the doctor.
What happens next with regard to the royal
physician you will have to read for yourself. Remember that Azimuth is a
trilogy with serious intent, despite its being cloaked in fable and adventure.
It is a discourse on philosophy and religion, too and people’s search for
meaning in their lives.
So, to the physician!
He began medicine as did most at that time.
His family were not well-to-do, surviving on low level trade, buying and
selling corn and other staple crops. Wanting something better for their eldest
son they paid for him to become a physician’s apprentice. He had an aptitude
and did well. He was ambitious and managed to hide it under a generally fawning
exterior which helped him develop his own clientele. After many years he was approached
by blood relatives of the king who wanted to supplant him as ruler and within a
short time the king’s old physician disappeared mysteriously on an errand to
save the life of a nearby noble. He now became a mole in the court but was
instructed to do nothing by his secret employers but ingratiate himself with the royal couple and after
some time became trusted. All the while his wealth increased, his patients
being attracted from a richer stratum and he tended to the king and queen in a
most proper manner. He built a most admirable house, enjoying the advice of the
king’s architect, married well and had five children. He was a key figure in
the temple and was seen to pray longer and harder than any other, always making
lavish gifts to the god of that city. No-one suspected that he was the cause of
royal still births nor his judgment that the queen suffered from an imbalance
of elements in her womb that could not be remedied. Satisfied that there could
be no competing heir to the throne, his fellow conspirators finally moved to
act and it is at this point that the young Magus and his father became
instrumental in the events above described.
So there we are. The physician. Funny
business writing isn’t it? All the while you are telling your tale you are excluding
strands in your imagination which you might otherwise follow because there are
more important characters developing and choking page space!
www.azimuthtrilogy.co
www.chronometerpublications.me
Labels: Writing: minor characters. The excluding element in narrative.
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