By Anne Fraser and Barbara Zuchegna
With assistance from Sharon Pickrel and Jean Lamb
Copyright 1999

Introduction

Foreword by Anne Fraser

Adrian Talbot, Jake Fowler, and T'beth naturally need no introduction. If you have gotten this far down Centre Stage, or even if you have been referred directly here to this story, you should know these people and their histories by now. If you don't, you are quite welcome to return to Centre Stage and read all about them. I particularily suggest reading the Toronto portion of the Brotherhood FAQ .

Since this is a story that was written on Ghostletters, it naturally refers to certain persons and events that exist only in that peculiar and singular mileu. I'm afraid that I cannot offer the back stories of the events, nor explain the histories of the characters mentioned. Some of them you will find by exploring a few of the links from the home page (see above), others you will simply have to bear with not knowing what our boys are talking about. One GL character, Alexis Colby, written by Jean Lamb, does make a brief appearance, but her story is her own and I have not the resources to tell it. Suffice to say that her intervention was necessary in getting our boys to the Middle East.

Introduction (to Richard and company)
by Barbara Zuchegna

This story first appeared, in episodic form, on the Internet mailing list Ghostletters, and like all stories, it followed on the heels of those events in which the participants here were previously involved. Since those events have some bearing on this story, it’s necessary to give a brief synopsis of how our guys got to be where they are, and in the mood they’re in, as this begins. Feel free, of course, to skip this…but you will probably want to refer back to it sooner or later.

For starters, as this story begins, Adrian Talbot has sworn off of women, men, and affectionate animals after abortive affairs first with Gabriel Tallant and then with Antosha of the many-consonanted last name. Adrian believes he is in love with Jake Fowler, the almost-entirely-human young man who befriended him in a previous story and accidentally swallowed just enough of Adrian’s vampiric blood to have serious consequences for poor Jake. Adrian’s adventures with Jake are detailed in other stories on this site. His affair with Gabe is posted elsewhere.

Richard Plantagenet…yes, that Richard III, whom traditional historians maintain did in his poor little nephews, the Princes in the Tower, was a restless spirit for 500 years, wandering in a void he did not realize was self-imposed. In loneliness, Richard reached out through the Spiritual Telegraph, the means of communication through space and time used on the Ghostletters list, and it was Adrian Talbot, a lonely man himself, who responded. A correspondence followed, and Richard even managed to materialize one night in Toronto to watch Adrian play Hamlet on stage. Eventually, a meeting took place, at that strange tavern called Hoolihan’s, when Richard was brought from his void for one night by magical means. Adrian was with his friends T’beth and Gabriel Tallant that night…and T’beth and Richard took approving note of each other.

But Richard disappeared back into his void, and only later was he brought forward into the modern world (the means don’t matter…it’s a long story) to a place in the Blue Ridge Mountains called The Refuge. This retreat was owned and run by a group of people who call themselves the Awakened. They are a race who are born human but who, through some form of drastic trauma, undergo a “change,” which gives them access to the 90% of the brain ordinary humans aren’t aware of and don’t exercise. This gives them the ability to manipulate matter and to transport themselves instantaneously hither and yon, among many other things.

Both Richard and his wife, Anne Neville, settled into The Refuge of necessity. Not much call for 15th Century kings and queens in modern America. Unfortunately, the same Gabriel Tallant who had bedeviled Adrian Talbot was now a priest, serving as prior at the Refuge, and very soon he became obsessed with Richard. This was a sexual obsession, but much more than that. Gabe is a control freak, and Richard is a man who will not be mastered. Serious bad stuff followed, during which Gabe went totally crazy and did some pretty awful things to Richard we don’t need to go into here. Suffice it to say that the culmination of all this was that Richard got his chance to take Gabe on with dagger and sword in an arena, and he killed him…or thought he did. But there was still a spark of life, and the Awakened Healers could not let it die. Gabe was saved, although incapacitated.

In the course of these shenanigans, Richard became permanently estranged from his wife, Anne, who was pregnant. He had an affair with a lady named Gilly, who also became pregnant. And Liliana Angeli, a lovely lady whose newly-acquired husband proved to be a total jerk during the course of all this, tried to use her Awakened empathic gifts to help Richard…and they fell in love with each other. Seriously. And you guessed it: Liliana also became pregnant. Richard might have heard of condoms, but he’s not your average Nineties kind of guy.

In the aftermath of the battle with Gabe Tallant, Richard was left in pretty bad shape both physically and emotionally. He made a spectacular effort to kill himself, during which the pregnant Donalore, a Healer who was Liliana’s best friend, miscarried in her efforts to save Richard. And when Doni was about to lose him anyway, Liliana stepped in and bonded with him, something only two Awakened individuals should have been able to do. Richard could not break the bond, and Lily drew him back into life. But her jerk of a husband, who should have been able to save Doni’s baby, was so busy being jealous of Richard that he didn’t even try…and his marriage with Lily broke up very soon after.

Richard’s wife Anne, who had made a lifelong study of him, forced him to promise her he would not kill himself or allow himself to be killed. But neither she nor Sir William Scrope, the First Crusade knight who had been brought back to guard Richard against suicide, could do anything about Richard’s desperate unhappiness. Stephen, the leader of the Awakened, who had a battle of his own to fight and wanted Richard’s help to do it, sent Liliana to Richard again, fully expecting what happened: they left the Refuge together.

Liliana gave Richard a few beautiful days at her house on the Maine seashore, during which she healed his heart with her love and his mind with her empathic gift. But Lily also cared for Anne, Richard’s wife, and she tried selflessly to send him back to Anne by letting him think she was going to return to her jerk of a husband. She wasn’t, and he would never return to Anne…but neither one of them bothered to tell the other one. Instead, they became angry and said some unforgivable things to each other that had Lily zapping herself outa there and leaving Richard alone.

Lily went to her friend Dinah’s house in Virginia Beach, to crawl into a hole and pull it in after her. Richard went hunting Lowland Bastards with Val Corey, the mage who had first brought him into this world…and damned if Val didn’t get him drunk by feeding him straight whiskey for the first time in his life…and then try to kiss him. Richard, about ready to believe there was something drastically wrong with him that attracted the unwelcome advances of other men, promptly threw up and then passed out. The following morning, a contrite Val offered to send a very hungover Richard anywhere he wanted to go. A wealthy man now (again, the means don’t matter…another long story), Richard decided to go to see the only other person he knew in this world…Adrian Talbot. Richard had been learning about the modern world as fast as he could absorb the knowledge, and he had already taken one previous plane trip, so he asked Val to set him down in some airport from which he could get a plane to Toronto.

And so our story begins…

Like every other story concerning Adrian Talbot, and indeed like every one concerning Richard Plantagenet, Iranian Knights contains adult situations and language. In other words, do not allow the kiddies to read this.