Situation Vacant - Synopsis
Volume One of the Pelarian Multiverse Chronicle by Gabrielle Staples

Job-hunting is something no one really likes doing but when you are getting desperate and have a young son to care for then you reply to even the oddest sounding situation vacant advertisements.

This is what our heroine Ruth Watson did and when she found herself catapulted into another world in another universe, it took her a while to accept that this was her new reality – one that she couldn’t turn her back on – especially when her young son was kidnapped in an attempt to prevent her using some extraordinary magical powers she didn’t know she had.

The world of Lantira is on the second parallel of the Transetic divergence in what is known as the multiverse – by nearly everyone except people living on Earth!
It is the home world of the magically talented ‘Guardians’ who have the duty of maintaining balance between positive and negative forces throughout the multiverse. Lantira is one of the magical worlds where the physical laws of Earth don’t apply - machines and electronics won’t work but magic does.

The Guardians are facing the irreversible tipping of that balance because of the powerful but negative Selador Sorceresses. These are a group of women from a world that was disenfranchised of it’s magic centuries ago and who have now discovered how steal the magical power from the talented Guardians, destroying them in the process. If the shift in the balance isn’t reversed, the multiverse, and all the infinite worlds in it, including our own Earth, will be destroyed.

The Guardians were given both their power and their duty thousands of years ago and at the same time they received the secret of the extraordinary Locus Crystals that enable them to travel between universes and worlds. In the past there was always one all powerful Guardian called the Mage Prime but unfortunately, the last Mage Prime disappeared nearly two thousand years ago before finding a successor. The Security Council knows that a Mage Prime is the only being who can halt the advance of the Selador Sorceresses and has been searching for the right person for decades. In desperation they advertised in the Times on Earth. – and guess who applied!

Ruth Watson has been identified as the new Mage Prime – only she didn’t know it - and certainly doesn’t believe it!

Stranded on Lantira, Ruth at first refuses the role but when she and the Guardians discover that, in order to stop her becoming the Mage Prime, the Selador Sorceresses have kidnapped her son, Will, she realises that she has no choice but to learn her new trade and help the Guardians.

Despite her disbelief at what is happening, Ruth is helped into her new powers by the members of the Security Council including – Orselon, the Head of the College of Wizards, Richard, Duke of Bardshelm and leader of the council, Gillano the deadly but foppish spy, Thomas Dextermann the remote seneschal who is also a shape changing humorph, the beautiful faerie Amariel, as well as the troubled Gramas, and the serene head of the order of the Loci, the lady Mycele. She also meets and befriends ordinary folk like the down to earth housekeeper, Berta, the loyal but inept page, Todi, the very proper Madame Fillibut, and Fetho Garze, a very successful wine merchant.

Her adventures expose her to other worlds and the perils of new relationships but also to possibilities she could never have imagined. In time she and the Guardians overcome the Sorceresses during a mighty magical battle but in doing so her son is desperately injured. Ruth finally accepts that if she is to help her son she cannot return to her former life. She truly is, and must remain, the Mage Prime of the multiverse.