Meeting Bem
On revising Chapter 5, introducing one of my favorite characters, and why strange men at crossroads tend to matter
One of the great pleasures of writing a long fantasy series is that every now and then, a character walks onto the page and refuses to behave like anyone else in the story.
Bem is one of those characters.
I spent part of this week revising Chapter 5 of Touch of the Eternal, the first full novel in The Graethean Chronicles, and tonight I found myself smiling more than once while working through his introduction. That is not because he is safe, and it is certainly not because he is simple. He is strange, disarming, talkative, faintly ridiculous at first glance, and far more important than he seems. In a story full of violence, prophecy, fear, and old powers stirring in the dark, Bem brings something I enjoy very much as a writer: surprise.
He also happens to be one of my favorite characters.
What I love about him is that he does not enter the story like a hero, a warrior, or a grand mystic. He arrives as an irritation. A nuisance. A man who prattles too much, smiles too easily, and seems entirely too comfortable in a world that ought to have scared the good sense out of him long ago. For Samien, who is raw, suspicious, and carrying more bitterness than he wants to admit, Bem is exactly the sort of person he would rather avoid.
Which, of course, makes him perfect.
Here is a small excerpt from that scene, when Samien first truly notices him.
He sat three tables away, long-limbed and narrow as a marsh heron, with a patched robe the color of old parchment and boots that had seen better centuries. A cheap wooden sunburst hung at his throat, though it was carved in no style Samien recognized. The man’s scalp shone in the firelight. His nose and ears were too large for his face, and his mouth looked made for smiling even when it ought not to have been. He spoke to anyone who passed within earshot, and to several who did not.
“…and that’s the whole trouble, you see,” the man was saying to an exhausted wagoner who manifestly did not see, “everyone’s forgotten the old names. Hard to be saved by a god no one remembers properly. Not impossible, mind you. Merely inconvenient.”
The wagoner grunted and moved away.
The bald man sighed cheerfully and accepted the rejection as if it were a private joke.
A dead-faith zealot, Samien thought. Wonderful. He went back to his stew.
waiting too long for the barmaid to make another pass, Samien rose to fetch her himself. As he moved by the bald man’s table, he heard him murmur to himself in a tone wholly different from the one he used aloud.
“…in the slag left behind in the forge of the night…”
Samien halted.
The words struck some hidden place inside him, not memory exactly, but something denser and harder to name, more like pressure. Heat. Hammer on metal. For an instant he did not smell stew and smoke but forge-fire and hot iron plunged into water.
He looked over.
The bald man was watching him openly now.
Their eyes met. The man brightened at once, as if he had just found a lost coin in the mud.
“Oh good,” he said, rising with awkward enthusiasm. “You heard that. I was hoping you might.”
Samien’s expression went flat. “Stay where you are.”
The man ignored him and came over anyway, carrying his cup with both hands. “Bemenelethonos,” he said. “But sensible people shorten it to Bem. Cleric of Graeth. Pilgrim. Occasional finder of things I was not looking for and sometimes things that I was.”
“Go away.”
Bem blinked. “Well, that would save time,” he said, followed by a small, fluttering chuckle that sounded as though it amused him more than anyone else.
Characters like Bem are a big part of why I love writing fantasy. In a dark world, they keep the story from becoming one note. They bring friction, humor, mystery, and sometimes a kind of truth that more serious people are too proud, too wounded, or too blind to speak aloud.
And in Bem’s case, he is carrying much more into the story than Samien realizes.
If you’ve been following along here, thank you. I’m continuing to build The Graethean Chronicles piece by piece, and I’m grateful to have you with me as I do.
Also, beginning last month, new subscribers receive a free download of my prequel novella, Divided Together, in PDF or EPUB format. If you have not subscribed yet, that is my gift to welcome you into the world.
Until next time,
J. James Adler