Lord Jago Branok is having a party at Loveday House.
Truth be told, he has a party every month. No two are ever the same. But nothing is ever the same at Loveday, his lordship’s rambling mysterious (some say haunted) manse, perched on the cliffs overlooking the sea on Keun Island, off the Atlantic coast of Cornwall. It’s a queer place, Keun,. Three miles of mudflats and an ancient stone causeway connect the rocky island to the Cornish mainland during low tide, but when the tide comes roaring in… fast as a galloping horse, as the locals say… the road is submerged and Keun becomes a true island, accessible only by boat.
The island has been inhabited, off and on, for millennia. Archeologists have found Stone Age cairns there, and the jagged remnants of standing stones larger than any of those at Stonehedge. A ringfort stood atop the island’s sheer black cliffs during the Dark Ages; later a crude castle of rough-hewn stone went up in its place. For hundreds of years Keun was the stronghold of a clan of reavers and pirates known as the Hounds of the Sea, who raided and plundered up and down the Cornish coasts and into Wales and England. It was from them the island got its name; keun being Cornish for ‘hound.’ They were finally extinguished in 1308 by Piers Gaveston, new-made 1st Earl of Cornwall, who put to death every member of the clan and razed their castle. Legends claim that the last surviving hound pronounced a curse on Gaveston as he died.
Thereafter the island remained uninhabited for several centuries, save for seabirds and an occasional fisherman. The fisher folk did not like to stay overnight, however; it was said the island was haunted. There were also tales of merfolk in the waters surrounding Keun Island; some stories spoke of beautiful mermaids who lured sailors to their doom, others of more grotesque creatures, not unlike the Deep Ones of H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos. Humanity returned to the island in the 1500s. A new castle arose atop the cliffs on the seaward side of the island, and a fishing village on the landward side. Over the years half a dozen noble families came and went, leaving legends of their own behind,. The last and greatest of the lordly manors on Keun was called Loveday Castle, the seat of the family St. Gerren…. but when the last of the line, the widowed Lady Morwen (known as Mad Morwen) died during the Great Storm of 1703 as the castle collapsed about her, she left no heirs, the ruins of Loveday were left to decay… until 1857, when a wealthy merchant styling himself Marcus St. Gerren laid claim to the island, pulled down the overgrown ruins of the old castle, and used its stones to build a large, splendid Victorian mansion on the site, which he named Loveday House. By the turn of the century, however, most of the money was gone, and the great house had begun to decay, a process that continued until the Great Depression, which took the last of the family wealth.
The last St. Gerren attempted to sell Loveday House, but found no buyers; the mansion had become a white elephant, too huge to maintain without servants, impossible to heat, its paint peeling, its foundations cracked. When old Tristan St. Gerren died in 1937, Loveday was abandoned once more and left to rot. And so it did… until a new owner turned up and set about restoring the old house to its former splendor. The “new lord” is a mysterious figure who goes about in a hooded cloak, always masked, who seems to have no limit to his wealth. A dozen mutually contradictory tales are told of him in the village, but on one point the villagers agree: Jago Branok is a wild card of some sort. An ace, a joker, a knave, no one is quite certain… but one of them, no doubt.
And the quests who visit Loveday each month are just as queer, the villagers will tell you. They come to Keun from all over the world. Most of them leave after the party winds down. Most of them. As to the others…
None of the villagers are quite certain. There are stories, though. Stories told by the likes of Stephen Leigh, Mary Anne Mohanraj. Kevin Andrew Murphy, Peter Newman, Peadar O Guilin, and Caroline Spector. They know a few things. They were guests at Loveday last year, accompanied by their characters old and new.
You can read all about it in HOUSE RULES, the latest volume in our long-running WILD CARDS series of mosaic novels. Volume thirty-four in the ongoing series (which launched way back in 1987)… and no, you don’t need to read the preceding thirty-three to enjoy this one… HOUSE RULES was released by HarperCollins Voyager in the UK in December, and by Bantam in the USA on January. (Yes, I am a few months late in getting out the word, but I have been crazy busy of late).
For those of you who like autographed editions, Beastly Books in Santa Fe has signed copies of both editions in stock.
(And they have many of the older volumes as well).
Whether you’ve been a Wild Cards fan from the very beginning, or are a newcomer curious to visit our world, do come to Keun. Jago Branok’s parties are not to be forgotten… and who knows, we may even let you leave.
GRRM
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