I wanted to write something a little exotic here. I’d been reading a lot of Greek myth and history, and decided to mix it with the death rituals of the ancient Egyptians and a few touches of Aztec, to create the hot desert country of the Two Lands, the living above and the dead below. My main character is Mirany, a shy and scared priestess, and at first I tried writing in first person, in Mirany’s voice. But this didn’t work, and the voice that was speaking in my ear wasn’t hers at all. It turned out to be the voice of the scorpion god himself, and so I decided to preface each section of the book with his comments, direct to the reader. This was great fun, maybe the most enjoyable part of the book to write.
Mirany discovers that the Oracle is being betrayed by its leading priestess, the Speaker, Hermia, and her lover, General Argelin. Together they are plotting to kill the old Archon and place a new boy on the throne. At first Mirany doesn’t believe in the god but when he starts telling her what to do about this she has to change her mind. She teams up with a scribe called Seth, a tomb thief known as The Jackal, and Oblek, a drunken and sometimes violent musician, in order to find and protect the new Archon. Who, it turns out, doesn’t need that much protecting from anyone.
When I wrote this the Gulf War was raging, and the news broadcasts were full of deserts and death. Obviously that influenced the books to some degree. But I really enjoyed the luxury of describing that hot, beautiful land, and contrasting the blue sunlit island with the narrow dirty streets of the Port, and below them all, the black silent corridors of the Tombs of the Dead. It was also a chance to probe interesting questions about ambitions and motives and what divinity implies. And I hope, to write a really engrossing rip-roaring adventure.
