© Swords and Sorcery Magazine
I’ve just had my first fiction published in 2023 under the name of Rab Foster – which is the pseudonym I usually attach to works in the fantasy genre. A Rab Foster story with the combustible title of The Pyre of Larros is now available to read in the current, 133rd issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine. It’s the latest in a series of tales featuring Drayak Shathsprey, a wandering swordsman / mercenary / vagabond with a knack for getting himself into serious trouble. He’s previously appeared in the stories The Tower and the Stars (published in the October 2022 edition of Aphelion) and Crows of the Mynchmoor (which Swords and Sorcery Magazine published back in January 2022).
The story’s setting – a small, crumbling town perched on the edge of a high escarpment – was inspired by a real place I’ve visited, the settlement of Ankober in Ethiopia. This sits nearly 2,500 metres up on the lip of the eastern escarpment of the Ethiopian Highlands and is about 25 miles east of the larger town of Debre Birhan, where I lived from 1999 to 2001. At one time a capital of Shewa, a kingdom within the Ethiopian Empire, Ankober looked pretty dilapidated when I arrived there one weekend. I’d been hired to do some research about it by the editors of a forthcoming edition of the Footprint East Africa Handbook. I came on an early-morning bus from Debre Birhan, which spent hours navigating a torturously narrow and rocky road, and found the place shrouded in a dense, eerie fog. The people were friendly enough, though, and when the fog lifted I saw how beautifully positioned their town was. Also, there were some fascinating Ethiopian Orthodox churches on the neighbouring hillsides. Wikipedia informs me that since 2009 Ankober has had a new road linking it with Debre Birhan – built, I suspect, with Chinese help.
Meanwhile, the idea for the mural that appears early in the story, bearing a very flattering depiction of the King Larros of the title, came from things I’ve seen in two other countries: Libya (when the visage of the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was ubiquitous) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (ditto for the late Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il).
As for the basic scenario in The Pyre of Larros, which propels the plot towards its fiery denouement… Well, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t at least partly inspired by a major event in the United Kingdom in the latter half of last year.
Just now, the main page of the 133rd issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine is available here and The Pyre of Larros itself can be read here.
