David Gemmell: Wolf in Shadow

Nothing is created in a vacuum, and I am grateful to many people for their help in the creation of WOLF IN SHADOW. My thanks to Elizabeth Reeves, my editor, for bringing me out of the mist; to Peter Austin, for the wagon-master; and to Jean Maund, Stella Graham, Tom Taylor, Ross Lempriere, Ivan Kellham and Tony Fenelon for invaluable assistance.

Thanks also to Jeremy Wells, for loyalty and friendship, in a world that rarely understands either.

Of the many characters I have created over the years, few have captured the imagination of readers as powerfully as Jon Shannow, the Jerusalem Man.

Alan Fisher, the award winning author of Terioki Crossing, and a fan of the film Casablanca, has a phrase that sums up characters like Shannow. 'They walk out of Rick's Bar, fully formed and real. The author doesn't have to work on them at all. There is no conscious act of creation. One moment they don't exist — the next they stand before you, complete and ready.'

I remember the moment Shannow walked out of Rick's Bar.

It was at the end of a miserable, wet day in Bournemouth at the start of autumn in 1986. I was the group managing editor of a series of newspapers stretching from Brighton to Portsmouth on the south coast. The previous week I had a call from my father to tell me that my mother was in hospital and that surgeons feared she had terminal cancer. They were right. A year before she had suffered the amputation of her right leg, and fought back to make a dramatic entrance at a Christmas Dance. This time there would be no fightback.

I had visited her in London, and then driven to Bournemouth for a business meeting, concluding it at around ten that night. I was Staying in a small hotel of remarkable unfriendliness. The kind of place — as Jack Dee once said — where the Gideons leave a rope! I hadn't eaten since the previous evening and I called the night porter. He said the kitchen staff had gone home, but there was a plate of olives someone had left at the bar. Nursing the olives and a very large glass of Armagnac I returned to my room and opened the Olympia portable typewriter.

I was at the time preparing a Drenai novel, featuring the Nadir Warlord Ulric, which my publishers had commissioned. According to the contract the book was to be called Wolf in Shadow and was, loosely, a prequel to Legend. I had completed around sixty pages. They weren't good, but I was powering on as best as I could.

Sitting by the window, looking out over Bournemouth's glistening streets, I tried to push the events of the week from my mind. My mother was dying, I was waiting to be fired, and staff, who had joined my team in good faith, were facing redundancy. After the fifth large Armagnac I decided to continue work on the book. I knew I was drunk, and I also knew that the chances of writing anything worthwhile were pretty negligible. But forcing my mind into a fantasy world seemed infinitely more appealing than concentrating on the reality at hand.

The scene I was set to continue had a Nadir scout riding across the steppes. The intention was to follow him to the top of a hill and have him gaze down on the awesome army camped on the plain below.

I focused on the typewriter keys and typed the following sentences….

The rider paused at the crest of a wooded hill, and gazed down at the wide, rolling empty lands beneath him. There was no sign of Jerusalem…

The walls of the mind came crashing in as I typed the word Jerusalem, thoughts, fears and regrets spilling over one another, fighting for space. There followed a bad hour, which even Armagnac could not ease.

But after midnight I returned to the page and stared down at it. It called out to me. Who is he, I thought? What is he looking for, this Jerusalem Man?

And suddenly he was there. Tall and gaunt, seeking a city that had ceased to exist three hundred years before. A lonely, tortured man on a quest with no ending, riding through a world of savagery and barbarism.

The story flowed in an instant, and I wrote until after the dawn.

Through all the despair that followed in those next painful months I found a sanctuary in the company of Jon Shannow. Through his eyes I could see the world clearly, and understand how important it is to be strong in the broken places.

As a result Shannow will always be one of my favourite characters.

For a while back there he was the best friend I'd ever had.

David A. Gemmell

Hastings, 1995

The High Priest lifted his bloodstained hands from the corpse and dipped them in a silver bowl filled with scented water. The blood swirled around the rose petals floating there, darkening them and glistening like oil. A young acolyte moved to kneel before the King, his hands outstretched.

The King leaned forward, placing a large oval stone in his palms. The stone was red-gold, and veined with thick black streaks. The acolyte carried the stone to the corpse, laying it on the gaping wound where the girl's heart had been. The stone glowed, the red-gold gleaming like an eldritch lantern, the black veins shrinking to fine hairlines. The acolyte lifted the stone once more, wiped it with a cloth of silk and returned it to the King before backing away into the shadows.

A second acolyte approached the High Priest, bowing low. In his arms he held the red ceremonial cape which he lifted over the priest's bald head.

The King clapped his hands twice and the girl's body was lifted from the marble altar and carried down the long hall to oblivion.

'Well, Achnazzar?' demanded the King.

'As you can see, my lord, the girl was a powerful ESPer, and her essence will feed many Stones before it fades.'

'The death of a pig will feed a Stone, priest. You know what I am asking,' said the King, fixing Achnazzar with a piercing glare. The bald priest bowed low, keeping his eyes on the marble floor.

'The omens are mostly good, sire.'

'Mostly? Look at me!' Achnazzar raised his head, steeling himself to meet the burning eyes of the Satanlord. The priest blinked and tried to look away, but Abaddon's glare held him trapped, almost hypnotized. 'Explain yourself.'

The invasion, Lord, should proceed favorably in the Spring. But there are dangers. . not great dangers,' he added hurriedly.

'From which area?'

Achnazzar was sweating now as he licked dry lips with a dry tongue.

'Not an area, Lord, but three men.'

'Name them.'

'Only one can be identified, the others are hidden. But we will find them. The one is called Shannow. Jon Shannow.'

'Shannow? I do not know the name. Is he a leader of men, or a Brigand chief?'

'No, Lord. He rides alone.'

'Then how is he a danger to the Hellborn?'

'Not to the Hellborn, sire, but to you.'

'You consider there is a difference?'

Achnazzar blanched and blinked the sweat from his eyes. 'No, Lord, I meant merely that the threat is to you as a man.'

'I have never heard of this Shannow. Why should he threaten me?' 'There is no sure answer, sire, but he follows the old, dead god.'

'A Christian?' spat Abaddon. 'Will he seek to kill me with love?'

'No, Lord, I meant the old dark god. He is a Brigand-slayer, a man of sudden violence. There is even some indication that he is insane.'

'How do these indications manifest themselves — apart from his religious stupidity?'

'He is a wanderer, Lord, searching for a city which ceased to exist during Blessed Armageddon.'

'What city?'

'Jerusalem, Lord.'

Abaddon chuckled and leaned back on his throne, all tension fading. 'That city was destroyed by a tidal wave three hundred years ago — by the great mother of all tidal waves. A thousand feet of surging ocean drowned that pestilential place, signaling the rein of the Master and the death of Jehovah. What does Shannow hope to find in Jerusalem?'