C.M. Simpson's Blog, page 92

Wednesday's Verse - Silver to the Sky

This week’s verse moves from  a verse about set texts to a series of haiku about ships leaving it a planet. It is taken from 366 Days of Poetry , a collection of mixed-genre poetry released in 2016.
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Silver to the Sky


silver shines

the tang of metal bleeds

across the tongue


ozone burns
singeing our nostrils
bitter air


red flame burns
bright cylinders climb
silver tears


moisture shines
gleaming rivers flowcheeks glisten
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------You can find the first two poetry collections at the links below - although there are plans to reissue them with more genre-appropriate covers in the future. The third collection will be released later in the year. books2read.com/u/mVLQZb books2read.com/u/bxgyLd

Tuesday's Short - Hammer & the Trolls

This week’s short story takes us from a world of dragons, wizards and dragon pacts to a science fiction story of princes, princesses, trolls and true love. Welcome to Hammer & the Trolls.

In a world where trolls can invade a castle from the inside, an interstellar prince finds he’s not the only one who can fire a sun-cannon, and the princess discovers she isn’t the only one who needs rescuing.Hammer & the Trolls

The butterfly flew across the gilded lawn, the only living thing in the palace courtyard. Hammer turned a slow circle, looking up at the empty walls, blank windows, and firmly closed front doors. This was bad. There were meant to be people here, lots of people, a celebration, a betrothal—his betrothal. Where was his future queen?
Hammer looked back across the drawbridge, out toward where he had landed the drop ship. Beside him, his protection team shifted uneasily.
“Your highness, I—”
Hammer held up a hand, silencing the team leader.
“We have to find out what happened,” he said, then, before the woman could suggest they retire while another team investigated, added, “I have to find out what happened.”
“And you have to save her, I suppose?” the woman asked, giving him a narrow-eyed glare.
“I do,” Hammer told her, trying to project absolute certainty into those two words.
Captain Ursula Ursus had the power to drag him out of there, kicking and screaming or suitably tranquilised. He knew that. Prince, or no, her principle or no. she considered his safety a duty to the kingdom, not him—and the kingdom always came first. When she nodded, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank you, captain.”
Together they scanned the courtyard, with its central fountain surrounded by a lawn of gold-edged grasses. Hammer drew in a deep lungful of air, smelt the faintest touch of stagnant water.
“There should be more destruction,” he murmured.
The captain wrinkled her nose, spoke low to the collar mike.
“Get me a whole bunch of violets and have the trauma ward on standby,” she said. “Call the Antareneinto low orbit.”
Hammer smiled. Ursula had just called for UV blasters and the medical ship. She’d used code so the trolls didn’t pick up on the fact they knew what they were dealing with. Maybe the clan were the best choice of protectors. This one, at least, knew exactly where it was at.
The kingdom couldn’t afford to allow trolls to derail the alliance, any more than he could stomach the idea of what those beasts would do to his love once the sun set… if they hadn’t already started.
“We have to get her out of there,” he said.
The captain glared at him.
“We have to get them all out,” she replied, her voice roughened by a snarl.
“Ma’am?” Her second sidled closer, stopped when she snapped her head around to look at him.
“Back off Uran,” she ordered. “I know what’s at stake.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The second-in-command cast a quick glance at Hammer.
Hammer spared him a single nod, then refocussed. Ursus clan politics had to be heeded, but there was a wealth of meaning in the man’s gaze and he didn’t have time to work out what it meant.
“Open the doors,” he ordered.
“Wait for the guns,” Ursula countermanded.
“Ma’am, we’re sitting ducks out here.”
Hammer had to agree. Sunshine or no, the windows overlooking the courtyard provided good vantage points. And speaking of sunshine… He glanced upwards, away from the windows, breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the sun over the left wall. They had a little time, then.
“If we don’t have them in the next thirty, we’re going in without them.”
As it was, they didn’t need to worry about opening the doors. The ground opened up beneath their feet in the neatest example of troglodytic cutting charges Hammer had yet seen.
“Show-offs,” he muttered, pulling his blaster and wondering just how many of them were waiting in ambush.
“Soft knees!” Captain Ursus’s shout echoed around them.
Hammer obeyed, glad his combat boots absorbed the shock of landing, but dropping to his knees and pushing into a forward roll, anyway. Two seconds later he came to an abrupt halt and found himself looking up at two tree-trunk legs.
“That could have worked better,” he said, as the troll grunted and looked down.
In the time it took the creature to register that its prey was sitting at its feet, Hammer had scrambled backwards and stumbled upright. He was firing even as his back met with the solidity of one of his bodyguards.
“Stick with me, Highness.” Uran’s voice confirmed his safety, even as they fired again.
The smell of scorched flesh, and an outraged roar met their efforts.
“Too low,” Hammer muttered, and adjusted up and double fingered the trigger. The Shortclaw hissed twice and the troll dropped, gaping wounds in its head and throat. Hammer didn’t bother looking to see if it was dead. It wouldn’t be. True to legend, the trolls were immune to pretty much anything that wasn’t sunshine, fire, or blessed by one of the myriad one-god religions found galaxy wide.
The one he’d just dropped would be regenerating. His only hope was that he’d hit something that would take it longer to recover from. All around him, his protection team was doing the same. Head shots, throat shots, shoulder shots to disarm them. And he meant that literally. They couldn’t wield weapons until the arms managed to reattach.
He could hear Ursula talking, quick and low, figured she was communicating with the ship, figured she’d activated every personal locator within range. And that was both good and bad.
“We’ve got to get further in,” he shouted. “We have to find them.”
“Open your eyes, highness.”
“I don’t care. Find me an exit.”
“I’ll make youa stars-cursed exit,” Ursula retorted. “Uran!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Hammer felt a hand at his belt.
“You take me where I want to go, Uran, or I will make your life hell.”
“Sorry, Highness. She’s the boss.”
Hammer fired twice more and spotted a gap in the walls that held a distant yellow glow.
“Guess you’d better come with me, then,” he said, and moved toward the gap. With any luck the stone above him would make it hard for an emergency teleport lock.
“Ma’am!” Uran’s startled shout was met with what sounded suspiciously like a curse, and the captain never cursed.
“After him!” she ordered. “And someone, burn these trolls.”
When Hammer looked back, fingers of smoke were trailing into the corridor after him, and his protection team was rapidly catching up. He stopped just short of the corridor’s end, and Uran shifted his grip from Hammer’s belt to his shirt front. Hammer lowered the Shortclaw as Uran picked him up and moved him to one side.
“I’ll cover you,” Hammer said, getting ready to step back out from the wall, once the bodyguard had stepped past him to see what was ahead.
But no sooner had Uran let him go, than a second hand descended on his shoulder.
“You’ll stay right there, Highness,” said another guard, moving past to cover the second-in-command.
“With me, Highness,” said Captain Ursus, taking station to one side and slightly in front. “Let’s go find your girl.”
Uran signalled the all clear and they followed, moving through a room that had once been the castle’s aquifer. It would take them weeks to clear it, months before they could be sure they’d removed all traces of contamination. Hammer did little more than give it a cursory glance as they moved through.
“Have you got those scans?” Ursula demanded. “I need to know where the sub-level water room comes out.”
“Do they know where the trolls took them?”
Ursula gave him a pitying look, and Hammer’s heart sank.
“Kitchens?” he ventured.
“Trolls don’t use kitchens.” Ursula followed Uran’s lead and started up a stairwell in the far corner of the room.
“Dining hall?” Hammer followed.
“Ballroom.”
Hammer swallowed. He remembered the ballroom. He’d met the princess there at Solstice. And she had not been impressed.
“So, you’rethe one,” she’d said when he’d found her standing on a balcony, gazing at the stars.
“I’m the one.” Hammer had positioned himself two strides away, not wanting to crowd her, had waited for her to make the next move. To his surprise, she’d indicated the stars.
“Which ones are yours?”
That had made him smile.
“None of them,” he’d said, and hastened to add. “We’re in orbit, but not overhead. Those are stars. Would I dare to spoil your view?”
“Why not?” she’d asked. “You’ve spoiled everything else.”
He had closed the gap between them at that. She’d half-turned and he’d taken her hands in his own.
“Is there someone else?”
She’d blushed, and shaken her head.
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I was to take my first voyage, come the winter.”
“You can take it with me.”
“It was to be my first command.”
That had silenced him, but he’d been holding her hands. He’d had to say something. Hammer remembered glancing away and up at the stars. Her first command. How could he ever compete with that? In the end, there’d been only one thing to say.
“I’m sorry, princess,” and their love had grown from there.
Now, he strained to see past Uran and Ursula. Somewhere above him, his princess was being held captive by trolls. The treaty for which she’d had to put aside her dreams lay in jeopardy, and she herself was in terrible danger. He pressed forward, and found himself collared and pinned against a wall for a second time that afternoon. Ursula’s fierce, dark gaze stared into his own.
“I cannot let you risk yourself.”
“You cannot do otherwise.”
“The kingdom—”
“The kingdom can rot, if I cannot save her!”
“Highness!”
“Either help me get her back, or get the Hells out of my way.”
She shook him, bouncing his back off the wall, and he glowered at her.
“Get me to where they are holding her, Captain. You can lecture me on protocol, later.”
“Stay with me.”
“As best I can, but the princess comes first.” He did not say what he might do, if he could not get his bride back; he did not even know, but the captain and her second moved swiftly through the ground floor of the palace, hesitating only when they reached the garden opposite the ballroom. They stood in the deepest shadows they could find, surprised to find the sun still up; the afternoon shadows were longer, but dusk had not yet come.
A scream wavered through the air, and laughter followed—the harsh laughter of trolls. A hand on his bicep stopped Hammer from surging forward across the grounds.
“They’ll be watching the garden. We’ll have to come at them from another angle.”
“Do they even know we’re here?”
Ursula dangled an ear piece in front of him. Dark green blood oozed between her fingers.
“Let’s assume so.”
Hammer peered around her, took in the gardens, the long halls leading to the ball room, the second storey. Captain Ursus followed his gaze and smiled.
“Tell us what to do,” she said, and Hammer did not even notice she’d neglected his royal title.
Less than two minutes later they were swinging through the balcony doors, blasting their way through curtains and door-frames, letting sunlight stream in on unsuspecting trolls and the beginnings of unspeakable horror. As he landed and let go, Hammer scanned the room, his mind echoing the question one of the trolls was bellowing into the face of a hapless handmaiden.
“Where is she?”
He did not hesitate, drawing and activating the sonic blade from his belt. This was no space for a blaster. There were too many friendlies, and not too many trolls. The night-loving creatures had packed most of their forces into the chamber beneath the outer courtyard. Hammer and his people had less than a dozen to deal with… until duskfall. Duskfall was when the reinforcements would arrive.
“Where is she?” he demanded, carving the troll’s head from its shoulders and then slicing through its limbs.
“She knew you’d come.” The girl spoke through a patina of troll’s blood, but did not seem to notice.
“Where is she?”
“She said she couldn’t wait.”
“Where—”
“She went to stop them coming through. She said you’d come.” The girl was dangerously close to breaking down. She couldn’t. He needed everyone he could get.
“Show me.” When she didn’t move, but continued staring into his face, he grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her. “Show. me.”
The girl didn’t reply, but she looked into his eyes, and laid a hand over his, twining her fingers around his palm.
“This way.”
Hammer returned her grip, following her, sword out, not looking for the protection team. They’d known what he would do the minute they’d let him lead the attack. It was up to them to keep up. He needn’t have worried. The captain’s familiar voice rang out as he let the girl lead him toward a staircase behind a stage where musicians usually played.
“After him!”
Hammer didn’t look back. He trusted Captain Ursus to detail who stayed and who followed. He trusted her to organise clean-up and medical crews, trusted her to give the all-clear to the reinforcements they were going to need. He did not trust her to reach his princess in time to save her. He did not even trust himself to be able to do that, but he was going to try.
“Faster,” he said, when the girl suddenly slowed.
“Don’t stop,” he repeated, when she suddenly baulked, but she pulled away from the next door, twisting out of his grip and ducking behind him.
It was all the warning he got as a troll lunged out of the doorway. Claws wrapped themselves around his head, pulling him forward and through the opening. Somewhere behind him, Hammer heard the captain shout denial, but he didn’t have time to listen. He sliced into the creature’s side as it closed, hearing it give a grunting gasp followed by choked laughter as it seizing his wrist. It made him drop the weapon by driving razor-sharp claws through his forearm and closing its hand. The blade vanished as soon as he let go the trigger, and the troll gathered up the hilt and tucked it in a pouch at its waist.
Hammer yelped, but couldn’t do anything to break free. He could feel his jaw bones creaking, his skull aching with the pressure of the grip on his head. He could not feel his sword arm. The troll cut him off from his allies simply by pushing the door closed with its foot. The troll pulled him around and peered into his face—and then it smiled.
“I know you,” it said, and Hammer noticed its voice lacked the gutturals associated with most of its kind.
He said nothing, couldn’t really speak with the way it was gripping his head. Neither could he resist when it turned him about to get a better look at him.
“You are the other half of the treaty,” it said, and then it smiled.
It stared at him for a little longer, as though studying his features and committing them to memory, and then its smile faded.
“Let’s see if you can do something useful before you die.”
Hammer stared at it. He wasn’t surprised; he’d been waiting for it to get around to killing him. Now, he was curious as to why that hadn’t happened.
“Useful?” he managed.
“To negotiate.”
“Negotiate?” Perhaps he was being particularly stupid, but Hammer couldn’t think of anything or anyone the troll might want to negotiate with.
The door to the chamber rattled, and the troll snarled. Instead of answering Hammer’s question, it placed a foot against the heavy black timber of a cloret-wood bookcase and pushed.
Well, Hammer thought, that is going to slow them down.
“Negotiate?” he repeated, and the troll looked at him.
“With the princess,” it replied.
“Why do you need me?”
“She is being unreasonable.”
Given what fate generally awaited troll prisoners, Hammer could well imagine why. His bride-to-be was a very determined girl. Not only would she be doing her damnedest to get herself free, but she’d then work just as hard to make sure the trolls didn’t succeed. It was a bit like their betrothal, really.
What Hammer hadn’t known at the beginning of their courtship was that his princess had found alternate means to marriage for sealing five previous treaties. Five. And in the end she’d agreed to marry him, anyway, on time, and without the delays for which she had become renowned.
“Unreasonable?” he managed, as his captor dragged him to a door on the other side of the chamber, and it struck him that he sounded drunk.
“Unreasonable,” it affirmed, towing him down a corridor, seemingly oblivious to the flashes of lightning-like oblivion that blinked intermittently through his head. He couldn’t feel his sword hand, below the wrist, but every step seemed to jolt the world around him.
Hammer stumbled, and the world tilted. The troll stopped, looked at him, and unclenched its hand. Hammer’s world went black. He came back around to find himself with a fine view of the troll’s backside. Before he could protest this, however, the troll called out.
“Princess! I have your prince.”
“And I have a cannon.”
Hammer tried to lift his head so he could see her. When his right arm didn’t respond, he used his left hand to push himself far enough off the troll’s back to see where he was. They were underground. Well that made sense. Hammer made himself focus on the surroundings and recognised another part of what had to be the castle aquifer.
Well, that made sense. He had wondered how the trolls had gotten through, but the princess was asking him a question.
“Did you get them out?” Her voice rang, cold and clear, across the chamber, as she ignored the troll.
“We called in reinforcements.”
“How long?”
How long for what? Hammer wanted to ask, but he hesitated too long, and she spoke again.
“How long ago did you call for them?”
Hammer tried to figure it out. He’d followed the girl for maybe a minute, possibly two. The troll had captured him… he tried to think, but his silence had lasted too long.
“Fine. I’ll give them another five minutes to get everyone out, and then I’m going to fire. You still got the same protection team?”
Hammer tried to remember which team he’d had last time he’d visited, but before he could confirm it, the troll lifted him off its shoulder and dumped him on the floor. The world faded to black again, but Hammer fought back the shadows to stay conscious.
This is going very badly, he thought, and turned his head to get a better look at his princess.
She was seated behind a small cannon mounted in an alcove opposite an aqueduct that arced below the ceiling. She had both hands on the control panel and the muzzle pointed squarely at the aqueduct. The castle foundations rested over the top.
Well, that’s the bridge they came through on, he thought. Shame about the palace.
He felt a hand wrap around his thigh.
“Give up the gun, princess,” the troll said, and Hammer felt claws pierce skin and muscle as it pulled.
Hammer could not bite back a cry of pain. The princess’s gasp of dismay whispered around the chamber.
“No,” but there was a tremor in her voice.
The troll’s grip tightened, and Hammer choked the pain back to a groan.
“His last moments can be merciful, or full of agony.”
“Don’t…” Hammer managed, ashamed to hear the pain in his voice.
“Is your team coming?” the princess demanded, and Hammer closed his eyes, swallowed.
“Is your team coming?” she repeated, her voice unrelenting, hardened against his pain.
Hammer wanted to tell her they were on their way, but he remembered the cloret-wood bookcase and didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t seen if the captain still carried the heavy blaster she had used to blow the windows on the ball room. He hoped.
“Are. They. Coming?” the princess repeated, snapping each word out like a command, and Hammer gave her the only answer he could, the only response that would allow her to do what needed to be done.
“Yes.”
Fortunately for him, it turned out to be the truth. No sooner had the sibilance of that answer died to silence, than she’d swivelled the cannon and fired.
Hammer felt a wash of heat as the troll’s head exploded. He raised a hand to wipe the gunk away from his eyes, and stared in horror as the wall beneath the aqueduct darkened. The trolls were coming, and the cannon would need to charge. What had he done? He had said his team was coming, but he hadn’t told her when, and she’d made a decision based on what he’d said, and now they were doomed.
Dammit, dammit, dammit. Why hadn’t he lied?
He could hear the rapid tramp of boots, smell the fetid stench of rotten water, decayed meat, unwashed bodies. The trolls were coming, and now they had no way of stopping them. He looked across the chamber at his bride-to-be as she calmly worked to reposition the cannon and watched the screens as it charged.
She glanced up, and saw him staring.
“They’d better be here soon,” was all she said. “I’d rather not die before my wedding day. If I do, we’ll be having words in the afterlife.”
Now, how is that fair? Hammer thought, and then blinked as sunlight flooded the chamber.
Sunlight? Hammer wondered where it had come from, but fingers of stone solidified in his thigh, and the chamber flared with the brightness of noon. That’s going to fix the trolls.
The light still shone when he opened his eyes again, but he could not see if the battle had been won. Blocking all else from his view was the face of the woman he’d fought both allies and enemies to save, and in the end she’d rescued him. Now, she looked down at him, tears edging her eyes in spite of the happiness he saw there.
“I knew you’d come,” she said, bending over him to lay a kiss on his forehead.
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Hammer & the Trolls is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: books2read.com/u/b5EeRb.
You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?

Carlie's Chapter 10 - Dear Tiger: I Don't Think I'm Human Anymore

LAST WEEK, Simone revealed she was being monitored by a company psi and said it would be better if Tiger didn't talk to her anymore. This week, Tiger begs her not to leave, and sends her something to help her deal with the psi.Chapter 10 – Please Don't Say Goodbye
Simone?
Simone?PLEASE answer me.Please.Pleasepleasepleaseplease….Simone?Well. Fine. I don’t know what you’ve done, or how you’re doing, but I’m going to come find you.So, don’t give up.You can’t go around telling people you love them, and then just disappear like that. This whole ‘I love you so I’m going to cut all ties with you’ thing? It’s not on. I won’t accept it, and I won’t let you say goodbye. It’s not allowed. I’m coming, and I’m going to tear the universe apart until I find you.Just as soon as I can.First, I have to tie things up, here.They brought in another scientist who can tinker with genetics. He loves my work, and really likes dinosaurs. Honestly, you’da thought he was like ten, the way he talks about the monsters we’re making. Anyway, he was horrified when he discovered I was only sixteen to his forty-three. Too bad. I can’t help how my head is wired. So. I have to bring him up to speed. That way the company won’t have any claims on me for training. Not that they have many claims on me, now, what with me being a juvenile and all.I think it will take me two weeks before he can do anything on his own, and to get Kiara to come alongside as his assistant. She doesn’t want to go anywhere, she’s just so glad to have her parents back to normal. And Del needs her. Their parents going AWOL wasn’t good for him, even though they never really left. Kiara says he’s not sleeping very well, so she has to stick around.Either way, she can’t help me, so it’s better she doesn’t know what I’m planning. She also doesn’t know about you. She’s not psi, and I don’t know if she’s readable. Which reminds me.You know how you said I wasn’t really a psi doctor?Well, I sat the theory exams, and I passed them. If I wanted to be a psi doctor, all I’d have to do is an internship, and I’d be there. That makes me the next best thing you have. Talk to me, Simone. I might still be able to help.And by helping, I mean I can try to teach you how to block.It would be easier if you could just get inside my head and see the theory, but I don’t think you can, so I’ll write down a few exercises for you to practice. You should be able to stop that psi from getting into your head, once you’ve practiced them, okay?Good, so, I know you dream of Marrietta. Do you ever dream of me?Actually, please don’t dream of me. The less you think about me, the better, because the less of me that’s inside your head, the less of me they have a chance of finding out about. Let’s keep it that way, until you get yourself out of there. You need to get away, and get safe.When you are away and safe, think of me before you sleep, and we’ll see what happens after that.Until then, you need to think of this: You might be in the main complex for where they study the effects of what was in those jars. You hear what I’m saying, Simone? I’m saying that you might not be alone, that there might be other test subjects in that facility, with you. I’m also saying that the answers to a lot of your questions about what might be in the stuff that was in those jars, might actually be in the systems wherever you are.And you are more than good enough to find it.If you can do what I think you can do, then you can find whatever’s hidden in whatever system you can hardwire yourself into. You had a natural talent for programming, right? Well, now you do that as fast as thought. You can swim the data stream, in the same way you can see what other people are thinking. Just make sure you can lock the door to wherever you’ve hidden your body when you do, because it can’t do anything while you’re running around inside the computer. You don’t want your head to be caught inside the computer, if your body needs it.Your implant can help you. It might be designed for education, but it can be modified for so much more. You don’t have to just use them for class work. I’m surprised you haven’t worked that out, yet. It just shows how worried you are.I don’t know what’s happening to you. Not for sure, but I can take a guess. Whatever was in the jars was mutagenic. You’re mutating. I don’t know why you haven’t gone down the same path as Marrietta, but you haven’t, and I’d need to see what’s happened to the others to work it out.You can get me that information, and I need it—but I need you to be safe, too.I’ve attached the blocking exercises, and one that shows you how to tell what other psis are looking at inside your head. The rest is up to you.
Talk to me.
Don’t leave me hanging, okay?
Tiger.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The complete series is available as short, individual ebooks, and will become available as an omnibus, later this year. In the meantime, you can find them on this blog, until one week after the last chapter in the last book of the series has been posted, at which point this series will be taken down, and a new series serialised on site.
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Wednesday's Verse - To the Writers of the Mandatory Readings

This week’s verse moves from  a Crapsey cinquain about vampires to a poem I wrote while in university. It is taken from 366 Days of Poetry , a collection of mixed-genre poetry released in 2016.
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To the Writers of the Mandatory Readings


Theory schmeory
give my head a break.I don’t need your Realism,or Constructivism for God’s sake!
Literature schmiteraturefrom which one do I partake?Each one is so tempting,what’s not to love or hate?
And for those writerswho are concise,whose words are clear and sharp,I lend those bright, rare creaturesa place within my heart.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------You can find the first two poetry collections at the links below - although there are plans to reissue them with more genre-appropriate covers in the future. The third collection will be released later in the year. books2read.com/u/mVLQZb books2read.com/u/bxgyLd

Tuesday's Short - Gulvane & the Dragon

This week’s short story takes us from the fantasy world of Tallameera and what happens when a world's deities take an active interest in their world to a tale of elves, dragons, bloodlines, and dragon pacts. Welcome to Gulvane & the Dragon.
Preparing for a new era in his life, the wizard Gulvane walks the corridors of his mind, remembering the eras locked behind three doors. Forester, Fighter, Assassin. Behind each door lie the memories and skills of who and what he used to be, inaccessible, unless he chose to return to the professions he had left. Uncertain of where his life will lead him, or of what he will become, Gulvane wakes to find a dragon standing over his bed. Now, what would a creature such as that want with an elf like himself?Gulvane & the Dragon

Gulvane walked the corridors of his mind, going deep into himself to remember who he was, and explore who he might become. The years of an elf were long, many more times longer than the span of an average mortal, and Gulvane was reaching another century, his third as a wizard, his seventh as an elf. In that time, he’d lived a lifetime in each of four different occupations.
Walking down the timber-lined hallway, Gulvane traced a hand along the walls, stopping at each of the three doors that kept the memories and skills that had made up his past. The first door was an oaken gold and adorned by a simple spray of leaves and flowers. A small grey-furred creature peered out from beneath the blossoms, its vivid green eyes touched with blue and gold. Gulvane laid a finger on its forehead and let the bittersweet feeling it invoked touch him briefly. The second door was a glowing bronze, and adorned with a pair of crossed swords. The third door was the color of night, created from a single plank of ebon-wood. A crossbow adorned its center, painted in a shade barely lighter than the surface that bore it.
Forester, fighter… assassin. Was it any wonder he’d become a wizard?
He walked past the gleaming darkness of the third door and stared at the heavy columns slowly forming in the blank space of wall beyond. Soon. His heart was restless, and soon he would embark on another era of his life.
Gulvane sighed. He had enjoyed his time as a wizard. It had been peaceful compared to what he had been before. The trouble was that he had no idea what he wanted to become next… and he was getting old, his body standing towards the end of middle age. He stood contemplating the slowly growing pillars before retracing his steps, touching each door as he passed.
Assassin, fighter, forester, he could return to any one of them by opening the door and stepping into the mind of who he had been. His fingers lingered on the bright-eyed creature peering from the flowers, before Gulvane shook his head and walked on, focusing his thoughts outwards and slowly returning to consciousness.
He woke to find a dragon standing over his bed.
“You are most entertaining,” it said, “and I have always wanted an elf of my own.”
“You look like a man,” Gulvane replied, “yet I know you are dragon. How is it I know that?”
“You are wizard,” the dragon said, leaning forward, quick as lightning, and pinning Gulvane to the mattress by holding the blankets tight across his shoulders.
He bent in closer, until their foreheads almost touched, and then the dragon inhaled, moving his nose a hair’s breadth above Gulvane’s skin and taking in the elf’s scent. It was frighteningly intimate and predatory at the same time.
“And you are so much more,” the dragon said, on the softest of breaths. “What is it I can smell? Blood and darkness, stealth and the silver shine of an adamantine dagger, the silence of a whisper bow. Deeper, and these mingle with the stench of death and battle, the mirrored arcs of twin blades, the lightning of a great sword—where did you store that, I wonder—and rage, such rage, fading to coldness.”
The dragon moved, stooping over him and inhaling the scent of Gulvane’s neck, his mouth close enough to the wizard’s throat that Gulvane’s heart sped its rhythm.
“But you were warm once, a gentle man, fierce only in the protection of the forest and its creatures, shunning civilization and a wedding that would have seen you close to ruling. What made you run, I wonder?” He leant closer, touching foreheads with the wizard and capturing Gulvane’s eyes with his own.
“No,” Gulvane whispered, and the dragon paused.
“No?”
For a moment, Gulvane hoped the beast would show mercy, but, instead, he felt the mattress dip beneath its weight and it pinned him so that he was entirely paralyzed. Its human lips curved into a smile, and it bared its teeth.
“No one says no to a dragon.”
“Please.”
“And we are not known for our mercy,” the creature said, touching foreheads again.
Gulvane tried to divert it from the path to his past, but the beast was older, far older than he’d imagined. The sense of the life it had lived left him paralyzed, partly in terror, partly in awe. It wanted an elven wizard for a pet?
In his mind, the dragon found the three doors and halted.
“Forester, fighter, assassin.” It cocked its head and studied where the fourth door was almost fully formed. “My timing is impeccable,” it said, its satisfaction a tangible thing that sent a wave of happiness through Gulvane’s head.
“But this is what I came here to find,” it added, and turned as Gulvane realized what it meant.
The elf dived around the dragon’s human bulk, and pressed himself against the door. The dragon gave him a look that might have been consternation, if it hadn’t contained so much amusement.
“Step aside, Gulvane,” the dragon said. “I will not harm you.”
Gulvane wanted to say that he was hurting already. The dragon raised an eyebrow.
“I did not say there would be no pain, only that you would not be harmed by it,” the beast explained, seizing him gently, but firmly by the shoulders and lifting him aside.
Keeping one hand on Gulvane to hold him away, it placed the other on the door, its palm covering the furry face hidden in the carefully painted branch. For a long moment, Gulvane felt nothing, and then the door cracked open just a little and the dragon reached inside.
The memory he drew out played before Gulvane’s eyes with a clarity he’d hoped to forget.
He had returned from a long sojourn in the forest, bringing with him the rarest of flowers for propagating by the druids, and study by the wizards. His heart had been full of joy because he had time to court his bride-to-be. He’d loved her since his youth, adoring her from afar until she deigned to notice him and gained her parents approval of the pledge.
She was not expecting him for two nights more, so he had sent the honey possum, the cutest and closest of his animal companions, to let her know he would be calling. She had not sent it back with a request that he wait until the next day, and he had bathed and dressed with a lightness of heart that vanished as soon as he stepped through the door to her private chambers.
His bride knelt before an open portal of swirling darkness, her silver-gold hair held back from her face in an intricate knot, her warm brown eyes brimming with tears, and an ebon dagger held tightly in one fist. In front of her, on a small, hand-carved altar of rarest silver wood, she had laid out the possum.
It was stretched on its back, not moving, its bright green eyes wide with fear. Gulvane remembered moving then, but not fast enough. His bride had raised the knife with one hand, and pinned the creature with the other… and then she had cut it open from throat to belly.
It had been quick and clean, but the smell of blood had marred the night air, and the swirling dark portal had come alive as his companion died. Laughter had crept out of the night beyond the portal, and two dark hands had reached through lifting the creature from the altar, and taking it into another realm.
Gulvane had not thought, as swirling tattoos of red and blue had grown on his fiancé’s face, had not thought as he drew his sword and took the noblewoman’s head from her shoulders, before thrusting the blade into the portal beyond her tumbling body. Something solid met the blade, and the thing on the other side had screamed.
With a vicious snap, the portal had ripped closed, shearing the blade, until only a four-inch stump remained attached to the hilt. Gulvane had dropped it and fled. After 210 years of living amongst his own people, he had run blindly away, not daring their justice, not able to face the other creatures who had run at his side. The honey possum had been beloved by them all.
Somewhere in the forest dark, his bond with them had snapped, and all the skills he had honed in his life had been crammed behind the golden door. The honey possum, hidden in its nest of flowers and leaves had taken much longer to appear. Gulvane had been remade, but he had not known it, until a caravan guard found him collapsed at the side of the road.
“Father.” Gulvane mouthed the first word he had spoken to a human, crashing back to wakefulness as the dragon pulled the oak door closed, and reached over to secure the bronze-wood door, as well.
“Not exactly,” the dragon said, stepping off the bed and leaving Gulvane free to move.
Like lightning, Gulvane flicked the covers back, and cast the most powerful spell that came to mind.
“Don’t,” the dragon said, raising an arm to shield his face, and pushing out and down with the open palm of his other hand.
It almost worked. Gulvane saw the dragon’s form shiver, caught a glimpse of the creature beyond—steel gray, long-limbed with a powerful body and well-muscled tail. Wings flared, built for speed and maneuverability. Gray eyes looked affronted, then partially amused.
Gulvane took all this in, before the spell bounced back, slamming him against the bed head with such force that it cracked and became partially embedded in the wall. The dragon’s form rippled just once more, and then solidified back into the human form he’d chosen—a red-haired man, with a salt-and-pepper beard, built like a warrior, heavier in form than his dragon self.
Before Gulvane could gather his breath, the dragon reached into his head and flicked open the golden-oak door releasing the feeling that had engulfed the elf as he had fled into the night. The wizard shook as though struck by a fist, and the dragon slammed the door shut, reaching for the bronze-wood door.
With the snick of a gleaming adamantine claw, the dragon flicked that door open, as well, and pulled the memory of change from it, overwhelming him again.
This time, Gulvane knelt before a woman dressed head to toe in black.
“Kill me if you must,” he said, “but my spirit will pursue you through an eternity of hells.”
The assassin had lifted a miniature crossbow of mist-night and shot him.
“We’ll let the gods decide,” she said, and watched as he collapsed. “When you find me, your training will begin.”
The poison spread rapidly. Gulvane had been a caravan guard and warrior-for-hire for a scant 78 years, outliving so many of his brethren that he’d had to move regions lest he be called a curse. That era ended as his vision faded. The last thing he saw was the mist-night crossbow arcing towards him. ‘Find me,’ she’d said.
The dragon dragged the bronze-wood door closed. Gulvane reached for another spell. Was not surprised when the dragon took and crushed it.
“You are thatGulvane,” it said. “I expected nothing less. Did you know no price was ever laid on your head? That her family was forced to pay the blood price for your disappearance?”
Whatever Gulvane had been expecting, it had not been that.
The dragon caught his astonishment, could not hide a victorious smirk.
“The tattoos remained on her face, the altar was covered in the possum’s blood. When her spirit refused to respond, the wizards were called. They reconstructed events so they could be seen. Her mother collapsed. Her father had to be prevented from taking his own life, such was his shame. The Council helped them recover, but the household is yet to regain its place amongst the nobility. Your name was cleared, but you could not be found. How did you learn to run so far and so fast?”
Gulvane was lost for words. All those years of rage… when he could have returned home. All those years of cold solitude where he had taken the lives he’d been paid for, and wound himself in a shroud of aloofness to hide the loneliness of his heart. The last three centuries living alone in a tower, when he could have had wives, a family, alliances… a tree bearing his name.
He thought he’d outgrown that grief, wept all the tears required, was surprised to find dampness streaking his cheeks as he stared into the dragon’s eyes. Gulvane swallowed, tempering the emotion, tamping it behind the walls of business.
“You had something you wanted to discuss?”
The dragon rocked back onto its heels, mild surprise driving it to temporary silence. Gulvane pushed himself upright and disentangled himself from the sheets. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he summoned an over-robe, and pulled it on. Wizard or not, he felt his night shirt left him at a disadvantage.
He watched the dragon regain its composure.
“I wanted an elf of my own,” the dragon said, raising a hand to silence Gulvane when he would have interrupted. “I didn’t want just any elf. I wanted a wizard who could fight, but one who understood stealth, and who didn’t need magic to avoid detection. And I wanted an elven wizard who had a heart.”
“You stalkedme.”
“You attracted my attention.”
“When?”
“The day you took the honey possum from the tree.”
“I… what?”
“You do recall it, don’t you?”
“I recall the day,” Gulvane admitted, “but I don’t recall you.”
“Back then, all I wanted was a honey possum to call my own.”
“I couldn’t save the others,” Gulvane said. “The storm called me out, and I went as quickly as I could, but I couldn’t reach the tree in time. Jambil was all that survived.”
“I know. I watched you swimming. Not many would have braved that current.”
“I didn’t know the lightning had struck so deep.”
“Your Jambil was outside the nest.”
“He must have sensed it coming. He always seemed to know…” Gulvane let the words go unsaid. How could Jambil have been caught and sacrificed? He thought back to the time he had sent the possum ahead, but recalled nothing in its attitude or gestures to indicate it knew it was going to its doom.
“She didn’t know she was going to take him, then,” the dragon said. “Not even a seer would have seen it. And he was pre-occupied at the time.”
Gulvane had known that. Jambil had been unsettled for weeks, but the forester hadn’t been able to work out why. He might have puzzled over it further, but the import of the dragon’s words struck a chord.
“You were watching me, even then?”
“You had taken my honey possum,” the dragon said. “Won its heart so it would not leave you. What else was I to do? It had to find a mate, eventually.”
“You tried to lure him away?” Gulvane was aghast. Jambil had never told him of thatencounter.
“He refused me, so I swore him to secrecy. Have you ever been tail-flicked by a possum?”
Gulvane had, more than once, and the memory brought a chuckle from his throat. A tail-flick to a possum was like a raised finger in some human cultures—extremely rude. The remembrance was less painful than he’d anticipated, but he changed the subject, anyway.
“Did you ever find one?”
“One what?”
“A possum of your own.”
The dragon looked away, pausing in silence until Gulvane thought he had struck a nerve. He was about to apologize when the dragon returned his gaze and replied.
“I raised Jambil’s family.”
If Gulvane had not already been seated, he would have collapsed onto the edge of the mattress.
“I am sorry,” the dragon added.
Gulvane waved it away, raising a hand and bowing his head until he had his emotions back under control. Jambil had made a family? Well, that explained a lot. Honey possums were notorious for keeping secrets. Gulvane wanted to weep, this time for not getting to know creatures he’d never met. Jambil’s children. Again, he changed the subject.
“I cannot be what you want me to be,” he said, feeling inexplicably weary.
The dragon leant against the wall near Gulvane’s bed and tilted his head to one side.
“Why not?” he asked.
Gulvane stared at him.
“Why not, what?”
“Why can’t you be what I need?”
“Because elves can only unlock one era of existence at a time. We lose the skills we learn in each, having to train for a new trade each time we undergo the change. We lose most of the memories, too.”
“Like those of Jambil?” the dragon asked, in a sly tone.
“Yes!” Gulvane snapped. “Like those of… What have you done?”
“I left the door ajar,” the dragon replied, and Gulvane felt panic flutter through his chest.
The dragon watched him, like a mountain cat stalking a rabbit.
“Do you hurt?” it asked.
“I…” Gulvane paused, giving himself a quick once over. “No,” he said.
This time he felt the dragon give the door a definite nudge, felt his earliest memories creep into the corridor and spread slowly through his mind, finding a place where they might fit. He watched as they met, and tangled with the current era of wizardry, sometimes with a minor clash, and sometimes like old friends. He glanced up at the dragon.
“Is it working?” the dragon asked, and Gulvane gave a nervous swallow, as he nodded his head.
They remained in companionable silence, the dragon watching Gulvane; Gulvane watching the dragon.
“Will it take long?” Gulvane wanted to know.
The dragon shrugged.
“It will take as long as it takes,” he said. “Are you ready to remember what it was like to be a guardian of merchandise?”
“And lives,” Gulvane told him. “Don’t forget the lives. It was how the assassins found me, remember?”
The dragon favored him with a long careful stare, and Gulvane felt suspicion stir.
“Tell me you didn’t send the assassins after me,” he said.
The dragon didn’t say a word, just nudged the bronze-colored door wider, until Gulvane remembered the utter exhaustion that had claimed him at the forest’s edge. With that memory came the knowledge that he had fallen almost a mile from the nearest trader’s camp. What was a guard doing so far from his client? It was too far for a simple toilet stop.
The dragon cleared its throat. It almost sounded embarrassed.
“Jambil’s mate was worried. She insisted I make sure you were all right. I made sure the guard kept walking until he found you.”
“But… such a long way?”
“He kept hearing noises, seeing shadows that might be bandits… and the camp was always close by when he looked back.”
“You obfuscated his mind.” Gulvane couldn’t keep the accusatory tone from his voice.
“He found you, didn’t he?” The dragon was unrepentant.
“And you left him to carry me back on his own.”
“He was strong enough.”
“He was an old man!”
“But not as feeble as he let you believe.”
Gulvane had always suspected it, but he made the excuse, anyway.
“He was nearing retirement.”
“And he needed a legacy,” the dragon said. “You gave him that.”
Gulvane had given him that, indeed. That thought comforted him when he remembered laying a farewell kiss on the old man’s brow. His father had died in his sleep on the road. Gulvane had come to wake him for his shift, and found him cold beneath his blankets. He would have been sadder if the man had not worn a faint smile, his face turned in the direction Gulvane had been standing watch.
They had taken the time to bury him, before the caravan moved on. Gulvane had used every fight, in the weeks after, to vent his grief. He had saved more lives than he’d ended, and thwarted attacks both bold and underhanded. He had thwarted enough of the latter for his prowess to be noted and a more specialized line of work to open.
“I knew you would meet the assassins eventually,” the dragon said, “and by that time, I foresaw a need.”
“You didsend them after me!” Gulvane felt anger and let it bleed into resignation; it had been a long night and he no longer had the energy to care. The truth of it was the dragon could end him any time it chose. The first prickle of curiosity touched his mind “Did you also pay them to end my life?”
“No.” The dragon looked at its boots, shifting its feet as though the question caused him discomfort. “I merely asked that, should they find you worthy, I would pay them well to train you in their art.”
Gulvane watched as the dragon raised its head, met his gaze.
“At least I know she did not miss,” he said.
“No. I was furious. She said she did not train to another’s whim. Your skills impressed her, but only strength of heart can overcome every effect that poison has. I contemplated killing her for her impudence.”
“Yet you did not.”
“She was the best of her time, and you have turned out well enough.”
“Was?”
“She was human, Gulvane. They do not live as long as we.”
Gulvane frowned at the response. It was too rehearsed by far.
“You have a way of avoiding the truth,” he said.
“Even legends make mistakes,” the dragon admitted. “I ghosted her when she accepted a contract on my life.”
“The laws of her guild would not have let her refuse.”
“She could have retired.”
“It’s not that easy,” Gulvane said, and wondered why it was important that the dragon should understand.
“You managed.”
“I took a somewhat unusual path—the kind that opens only once, if it opens at all.” He remembered bloody nights, and weeks spent in the ecstasy of walking on the edge of life and death. He remembered striking a bargain with a wizard who thought he’d come to kill him, and earning the right to inherit. “My mistress had no such path, although she dared much wrath to object.”
“She did?” The dragon asked, eyebrows raised. “She never mentioned it.”
“When you say ‘ghosted’,” Gulvane said, a terrible thought crossing his mind. “do you mean—”
“I ended her life, and forced her service in unlife. It seemed only fair. My opponents had to rethink their strategy, and you had time to learn.”
Now, they came to the crux of the dragon’s visit. Gulvane leaned forward, staring intently at the dragon’s face.
“And?”
This time the dragon’s gaze captured Gulvane and held him, until its eyes were all that he could see. Bronze pools, full of banked heat and fire, they seemed to encompass worlds.
“You have had time enough.”
“And you have time no more.” Gulvane broke the spell, shuddering at the power he’d seen inside the dragon’s skin.
“Impudent elf. I don’t know why I persisted when I saw what you would become.”
“Because you need me, and I have exceeded all the hopes you had for me.”
The dragon managed another sly smile.
“Perhaps I only needed a pet.”
“I am no honey possum.”
“You come close.” The dragon smirked.
“And is some dragon forester coming to take me out of my tree?”
“This time I have beaten the forester to the nest.” The dragon raised its head. “Although I fear he is on his way.”
Fantastic, Gulvane thought. I’ve caught the attention of two dragons.
Four, the dragon’s voice spoke in his mind. “But I am the only one who has shown care for you. The others would make you a spectacle.”
“To cause you discomfort.”
“To weaken me.”
“How?”
“It would be an embarrassment.”
“But you have weathered those before.”
The dragon sighed. “You are too impudent by far.
Gulvane leant back, raised an eyebrow in amusement. It was dangerous to bait the beast, when he was so contested, but he wanted to know at least something of the creature’s plans. The dragon blinked.
“It would weaken me.”
That simple admission shook Gulvane to the core.
“You have invested that much?”
“Look within, and you will see the first bond threads have already formed.”
“I should have seen them long ago.”
“I kept them hidden.”
Gulvane was aghast.
“You had no right.”
“I saved your life.”
That made Gulvane pause. The beast was right. Even the small interference of bringing his adopted father to his rescue was enough to create a debt. When he looked within, Gulvane found the bond threads shining bright and strong. There was just one problem.
“I am not yet what you want,” he said.
The dragon smiled a terrible smile.
“Don’t—” Gulvane’s protest was too late.
The dragon stepped sideways in his mind, kicking the bronze-wood door wide, even as his fist hammered down on the ebony surface of the door beside it. The mist-night bow slipped free of the magic keeping it in place as the portal shattered, and memories, dark as night, flooded out engulfing the corridors of his mind in bloody wreaths of sorrow and secret victory.
This time the pain was like a physical blow. So many memories, so much coldness, so much—too much—emotion dammed up and masked behind the professional solitude his mistress had made him learn. The poison had required strength of heart to endure and then defeat, but the trade had encased that heart in an icy shield denying emotion.
The sun shivered at the horizon’s edge, lending the world a grey light until it could shine in full. Gulvane felt its promise in the coolness of the pre-dawn breeze, heard it in the growing chorus of bird and animal cries, saw it in the silvered edges of his chamber’s curtains.
The dragon still stood, propped against the wall. Its brow was furrowed with concern. Relief softened its features when it saw Gulvane open his eyes.
“My rival comes,” the dragon said. “I trust you are whole, now—all your lifetimes blended as one.”
In his mind, Gulvane took note of the shattered assassin’s door, the way the fighter’s door hung half off its hinges, the fact the forester’s door was wedged by the softly mounded earth of memory. A fourth doorway stood, forever open, a square framework of granite and stone. The rooms beyond each were empty, yet he could see relics of his past in each one. He would use them, later, he knew, to recall exactly what he needed, until he had explored his mind enough to know where his secrets were kept. In the meantime, he reached down and picked up the crossbow, feeling it become a weight in his hands even as it disappeared from inside his head.
The undoing had been remarkably easy, given how hard he’d studied to work out how to hide it there.
The dragon watched. When Gulvane looked up from the weapon, it spoke.
“Will you treat with me?” it asked. “Call me master for another lifetime?”
Gulvane knew a fifth door was already forming, a great archway leading to an even larger cavern. He was ready for change, curious to see what events would give him the memories to fill a space that size. There was only one thing more he had to ask. One debt he had to pay.
“My mistress.” Gulvane made it a statement.
“I will show mercy.”
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Gulvane & the Dragon is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: https://www.amazon.com/Gulvane-Dragon-Tales-Tzamesch-Simpson-ebook/dp/B00D18OLJO/.
You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?

Carlie's Chapter 9 - Dear Tiger: I Don't Think I'm Human Anymore

LAST WEEK, Tiger revealed he knew where Simone's parents and old classmate were. This week, Simone reveals that the company has discovered her psi abilities and is monitoring her with a psi of their own.Chapter 9 –Visits from the Psi
Dear TT,
I would love to dance with you, but I’m in trouble. I couldn’t hide the mind-reading from the company psi. I’m not sure I could hide anything from her. She came with the doctors, and I was curious.I mean, I could hear the other doctors coming down the corridor, but I couldn’t hear her. I could tell she was there. She was this presence. I tried to reach out and touch her mind, but it was like her mind wasn’t there.There were no thoughts. I couldn’t even sense emotion.I’m sorry if this is coming as a bit of a surprise to you, Tiges, but I didn’t want to write about it. Writing about it made it all too real, and who wants to make being this kind of different real, right?Anyway, I knew something was coming, but I didn’t know what. I shut everything down that they might find in the computer, moved files and erased them from where I’d had them. Broke links and blocked routing. I didn’t bother with the keyboard. I just plugged my head into the data stream and went to work.Thing was, I forgot to set an alarm for the door.Tiges. She was standing right behind me for the last part. Right. Behind. Me. I don’t know what she saw. I don’t even know how much she could see inside my head, before she came into the room.What if my head is like everyone else’s? What if a good psi can just pull whatever they want out of it, without me even knowing that’s what they’re doing?I’m scared, Tiger.She’s been visiting me every day. She never says anything about what I do with the computer, so I think maybe I’m safe to send you this, but I’ll be quick, and I’ll break everything down as soon as I’m finished. She makes me do mind exercises the whole time she’s here.She doesn’t talk much—just enough to tell me what to do—and she hasn’t told me her name. That doesn’t seem very fair, Tiges. Her knowing my name, and me not knowing hers. I wonder why that is.You’re the psi doctor. Why d’you think that is?No, that’s not fair. You’re not really a doctor; I know that. I’m sorry.Anyway. Good work with finding Marrietta. I’m still dreaming about her, but I can’t make much sense of it. Sometimes it’s like she’s awake and she’s hunting. Why would she be hunting? She’s human.But her thoughts are full of hunger, and blood, and death, and something called The Blade. She needs to find The Blade so she can progress. Her head is full of it.And she doesn’t even know what it looks like.I don’t get it, Tiges. She used to just be full of herself. All she’d talk about was the next excursion, and how she could show this person or that where to find the best hairdressers, or the nicest fashions or foods. Now, I think she’d rather eat the hairdresser, and turn the dress into lining for her den. Everything seems to be food or sleep to her.It’s weird, but she makes me feel more human than I ever did.And she can see in the dark.That’s why they have the night cycle. It helps them develop their dark-sight, or whatever it is they use to see when there’s no light. The hunting is why they have the complex. I don’t think they let anyone out of that. At least, I don’t think they have, yet. I think the alterations they send to the complex all go through this stage of being a pure hunter.If what was happening to me was scary, Tiges, it’s nothing to what Marrietta’s going through.I don’t want to go through that, but I can’t help feeling that I might have to.I mean, Marrietta and the others were exposed to the same thing I was, right?Well, they’re hunters.Why aren’t I a hunter? Is it because I’m a psi? Is that why?Did that stuff get into my head instead?Can you tell what’s so different between Marrietta and me?But I forget. You’re in this mess just as much as I am, and that’s my fault. I’m sorry for dragging you into this, and I’m sorry, because I don’t know how to get you out of it. Maybe it would be better if you didn’t write to me for a while. Safer.Until I can get in touch with you, again.I have a psi who visits me every day, and that can’t be safe.I love you, Tiges.I wish I’d told you before, but I didn’t want to say goodbye.
S.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The complete series is available as short, individual ebooks, and will become available as an omnibus, later this year. In the meantime, you can find them on this blog, until one week after the last chapter in the last book of the series has been posted, at which point this series will be taken down, and a new series serialised on site.
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New Cover - Trading By Firelight

The next cover for Trading by Firelight , the fourth book in The Magic Beneath Paris series was approved late last week. Trading by Firelight will be released Thursday, April 18, ET, U.S. time.



Kearick, Marsh’s former boss, is in league with the raiders, and he’s fled to another of the Four Caverns.
With Roeglin, Gustav and her usual team of troublemakers, Marsh pursues him from Kerrenin’s Ledge to a waystation on the edge of the Devastation that used to be Paris... only to find he’s already gone.
Before they can chase him further, the team must save the waystation, discover the fate of an overdue caravan, and survive the tunnels leading to Dimanche.
Can the team survive the dangers of the surface world and an increasingly neglected trade tunnel to reach the settlement, before Kearick sells it out to the raiders?

CampNaNoWriMo Progress & Snippets - April 2019

I swear I'm going to get better than this... said every writer, ever.

This year, I'm doing CampNaNoWriMo, again, with the first book of a brand new series in the GameLit genre - which is a brand new genre, for me. It hasn't got a title yet - those usually happen once the book's written, in just the same way that chapter titles are done once the chapter is written, and then only if I remember.

Below you'll see the first 10 days' progress and snippets. I won't be sharing all the book, just around 150 words from each day. So far, the first words and progress for each day up until yesterday are as follows:

April 1
Progress: Well, there was no fooling with this day. I had a full morning of homeschooling and doctor's appointments with blood tests attached, followed by more homeschooling in the afternoon. It was busy, and disrupted, and not many words happened.

First Words from Chapter 1 - Into the Blue The cat ran under Weyona’s feet, and she swore. She was trying to juggle house keys, her mobile, and her purse, and the damn thing took full advantage, scampering through the barely opened door and out into the yard.


“Toxic!”


Every time she said it, she almost winced, but it still made her smile. It was a bad name for a cat, but the kids named him, and she’d thought it was cute at the time. It wasn’t so cute when she was looking for him out in the park. The looks she got shouting his name as she searched the flower beds and fish ponds were borderline priceless!


Most people would be sympathetic. She lived in a cat containment zone, where pets weren’t allowed outdoors. If one escaped nearly everyone helped get it back before the local pet patrol found it.

April 2
Progress: A day at home, and an early start before homeschooling. More words got done, but I had specialist appointments to make  and was distracted and put off my stride. I took some downtime in the afternoon.

First Words from Chapter 1: Into the BlueThis was the ninth time this week Tox had gotten away, and something told her the neighbours might be less-than-understanding, this time round. A much as they said they admired her for adopting a rescue cat, she didn’t think they were ready for the reality of it.


She raced after him, slamming the door behind her as she stuffed her keys and mobile into her purse.


“Tooooxiiiiic!”


But the cat ran on, straight across the road and through the gates of the park. Weyona ran after him, coming to a screeching halt on the curb to let a car roll past, before bolting over to the other side.


“Toxic” she shouted, following it with a muttered, “you furry pain in the ass.”

He’d vanished from sight by the time she reached the entrance, but she didn’t let that bother her. She knew exactly where he’d gone. 

April 3
Progress: Another early start, but one peppered with distractions, followed by homeschooling, a sport break, and more home schooling, and the first round of edits for Book 4 in The Magic Below Paris series. Wednesday's are always a bit busy, and this one moreso than usual. Words happened. I made it so.

First Words from Chapter 2 - Touchdown “Luka?” she called, lifting her head, but Luka wasn’t there.


Panic surged through her and she looked around.


“Nettle? Lena? James?”


She saw nothing but trees, no-one but the shadows creeping along the ground.


It is dusk, and the Howling Woods is full of wolves and goblins. The village at its edge might provide a safe place from both... if only you can reach it...


Weyona saw the words form in her mind, and thought she almost heard a voice, but whether it was Theo’s, or her GM David’s, she couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that she had to find the village... and to do that she had to work out which way to run.


If she didn’t choose right, she’d end up moving farther into the forest.


I could do with a clue, she thought.


Roll 1d8.

April 4
Progress: More words... and more homeschooling. Also preparation for a meeting to renew the schooling registration. Admin needed doing, too, so I made some space for that.

First Words from Chapter 2 - Touchdown“Please, don’t,” she began, trying to pull one leg free so she could lash out with her foot, but he only laughed.


What was going to happen next, didn’t. Two long arrows flew in from the side and slammed into the werewolf’s all-too-human chest. At the same time, the hairy beast holding her jerked, yelping in surprise. He threw her to one side as he rolled to his feet, roaring in anger.


The human-wolf started to shift, growing in bulk and gaining fur, just as two more arrows shot through the dark, their shining tips piercing his throat and stomach. Weyona kicked away from him, scrambling back into the shelter of some bushes as she tried to keep hold of her pants.


She thought about making a break for it into the dark, but thought again. The unseen archers might not be able tell her running away from the monsters moving in, and she didn’t want to be shot. The rest of the wolf pack had returned.

April 5
Progress: Another early start, more homeschooling, and another doctor's appointment, this time for the blood test results - all normal, which was great relief. The admin really needed doing and took precedence over words, but some words still got done.

First Words from Chapter 2 - TouchdownLooking around, she saw that the layout of the base was somewhat different to how she remembered it. It was bigger than Theo had described it, and more a small village than a base. Weyona stared.


There was the smithy she remembered, and over there, the fletcher's. The inn was new, though, and so were the cottages arrayed beyond the main buildings lining the main street and parade ground. The captain rode up to the building his group was headquartered in, and then around the side of it to the courtyard housing the stables and the prison block.


Her arms tightened around Gregory’s waist, and he laughed.


“What do you think?” he asked, bringing their mount to a halt as a young soldier ran out to take the reins.

To her surprise, Weyona saw the new arrival was male. Theo had always had female soldiers on stablehand duties... and on kitchen duties, now she thought about it... and latrine duties. She was glad to see that wasn’t always the case.

April 6
Progress: An early start and day spent mostly on tackling the admin - I have a task list that needs to be completed over the next couple of months. I must remember to share that some time. No homeschooling so I was able to clear some decks.

First Words from Chapter 4 - At the Temple of MerilorRosalind pivoted towards the window. She knew that voice!


But not as Rosalind—and she was hearing voices, again. This time the voice sounded just like Theo.


On a 12, you are sure you recognise Kallea disguised as an Olgarion standing on the other side of the room.


Rosalind scowled.


Roll initiative.


Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she was sure she heard the rattle of dice being rolled. It made the whole situation seem very surreal.


Why in all the worlds would Peter’s assassin character be here? Unless... Gregory broke in before she could respond, stepping in front of her to block Chopin’s line of sight.


Chopin... Peter always named his characters after famous composers.


Initiative 20. This time the voice was definitely Theo’s, and nothing like the voice she’d heard before.


“Kallea’s not here,” Gregory told him, and then plucked a dagger from its sheath and threw it.


What’s your flat-footed armor class?

April 7
Progress: Today was the first day of normal time. Daylight savings ended! Admin took over most of the day, but words still got done.

First Words from Chapter 4:Instead of walking past the Dragons’ headquarters, Gregory surprised her by turning down a path that took them past the cottages lined up behind the businesses lining the main street. Until then, Rosalind had thought people lived above their work places, but now she saw that many lived in a row of small houses at their backs. Across a narrow street, stood another row of small houses, each set on a neat plot of land, fenced by ramshackle palings. Gregory caught the direction of her stare.


“We make sure everyone has a place of their own. Everyone contributes to the community, so they deserve at least that much. We help them build it, and fence it. After that, it’s up to them to make it something more. Come. The temple’s this way.”

A low stone wall had been built the next street over, although Rosalind could see a larger wall was planned.
 
April 8
Progress: Despite an early start, the morning was constantly disrupted by phone calls and a long-awaited delivery. Homeschooling continued, although it was a difficult day, with maths creating more problems than were solved. I was able to do some writing in the afternoon, but household tasks could also not be ignored.
First Words from Chapter 4:

The Chamber of Cleansing deserved its name, Rosalind thought, after being hustled into a two-chambered cubicle. She was told to undress in the first half, and then to go stand in the second and be prepared to use the wash-cloth and soap provided to clean herself as the deities intended.


As the deities intended?


It was all she could do not to laugh, but Rosalind obeyed the instructions, and was pleasantly surprised when warm water showered over her from what looked like a hole-filled bucket attached to a pipe in the wall.


Magic or physics? she wondered, and then decided she didn’t care.

April 9Progress: This was a massive day. I wrote in the morning, and then went to the meeting that would decide the podling's educational future for the next two years. It was a relief to be told homeschooling could continue. The afternoon was spent destressing, and culminated in the first day of trying to develop a running habit - although, at this stage, it is more of a short walk-jog. Twenty-five years of neglect have resulted in some leg strength and a tonne of fitness. I need to fix that.

First Words from Chapter 5 - To Be TitledIf Rosalind was honest with herself, she hadn’t really through about which deity she wanted to follow, but Merilor made sense. Apart from being the only deity with any representation in Dragonshaven, he was also a deity of her homeland...and as a nature deity, having her mother follow him would make her youngest daughter happy. Nettle always played as a druid.


That thought brought a smile to Savila’s face, but the silver-garbed priestess said nothing, and Bergit continued.


“You also wish to train with the Dragons, in effect, taking on the training of two demanding trades, is that not so?”


Rosalind nodded, and the priestess frowned.


“It is a difficult path,” she said. “Few who choose it can sustain it.”


“I will cross that bridge when I come to it,” Rosalind told her, “but, if it means that the characters hunting me are unprepared, then I’m willing to do the work.”

April 10
Progress: Today was a difficult day. Homeschooling and sporting activities were fraught with tears, possibly as a continued stress bleed-off from the meeting and routine disruption the day before - and I missed the second day of jogging. There was some joy in the day, though, when my son and my grandson made an unexpected visit for the afternoon and evening. It was wonderful to see them. Admin continued for part of the afternoon, and I got some words done later in the evening. They weren't many, but I am determined that not one day will go past without something written. There is no longer any point in waiting for Life to play nicer. I've had shenanigans since June last year, when I recovered from a back injury, only to have a precancerous growth cut out of my leg. Things are showing some signs of improvement, but the world isn't finished with me yet, so I'm going to get words done every day, no matter what the disruption, or the stress, or the trauma., because how can I say I'm a writer if I don't actually write?

First Words from Chapter 5:She took a breath to continue, but Savila broke across her.


“It’s not enough,” she said, explaining when Bergit looked at her. “The names. They’re not enough. We’re going to need more than just clerical magic to banish the demons; we’re going to need someone who understands the arcane, as well.”


“And who is willing to work with the Order to banish the demons from this plane?”

At her words, Rosalind felt a frisson of excitement flow through her.

A wizard! For a moment she wondered if she would be forgiven for changing her career, but then she shook her head. No. She had chosen, and the path was one that Theo would never guess at in a hundred years—and they were strong classes, if she worked them right. She just had to choose the right skills and feats to spice them up.

April 11
No words, yet, although the morning jog is done. This post is going up, and then the usual morning duties need to be performed. Writing will occur in fits and starts between homeschooling and those tasks.

My Other Works of Fantasy:
The last twelve months have focused almost purely on science fiction... okay, except for the 4 novels I've written for LMPBN, and a couple of short stories, one of which will be released in Fireside Creation's Dragonscales anthology. Apart from those, I have a trilogy I wrote as the first novels of my career, and the first book in an incomplete series.

You can find them at the links below:

From LMPBN with Michael Anderle:

Trading into Shadow
Trading into Darkness
Trading Close to Light


My early fantasy novels - the Shadow series. Note: completing new covers prior to a rerelease of the series is on the Task list. Until then, you can find them as they look below:
Shadow's Rise Shadow Trap Shadow Fall


My other early fantasy novel, and an early sci-fantasy novel - these series are slated for completion by early and mid-next year, respectively. The links are below the covers: 

books2read.com/u/4DoAOQ books2read.com/u/3nYKVP

Wednesday's Verse - Vampires Uncut

This week’s verse takes us from  a verse that plays with repetition and rhyme spoken by a person by a waterfall to a series of Crapsey cinquains. It is taken from 366 Days of Poetry , a collection of mixed-genre poetry released in 2016.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Vampires Uncut


Vampires
stylishly dressed
swingingly sashay, seduce
fear cut by desire
bloodsuckers


Nightstalkers
curvaceously bestowed
smile, eyes calling
calming, allaying fears, soothing,
soulsuckers


Dracs
bloodied, pale
crumbling to dust
fears fading, regrets growing
Sun-burnt
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can find the first two poetry collections at the links below - although there are plans to reissue them with more genre-appropriate covers in the future. The third collection will be released later in the year.



books2read.com/u/mVLQZb books2read.com/u/bxgyLd

Tuesday's Short - Gods in the Lianreida

This week’s short story takes us from a world being raided from another dimension to what happens in the Lianreida forest when deities pay a visit to the world of Tallameera. Welcome to Gods in the Lianreida.
When Larias, god of problem-solving and secrets, flies over the forbidden lands of the elves, he only hopes to discover what force is powerful enough to breach the elven magic protecting the forest. What he finds, instead, is a battle in which he is compelled to intervene, but, regardless of intent, when gods meddle in the realms of other gods, there is always a price to pay.Gods in the Lianreida

It hadn't been a cataclysmic event in the realm of the gods, unheard of yes, and a matter of urgency, but not yet a cataclysm. The enemy had grown strong enough that a Messenger, one of the gods' untouchable servants, had been injured protecting Aravare, chief of the gods of man.

Now, Larias, problem solver and finder of secrets, flew the heavens in a chariot of his own invention seeking a cure. He did not begrudge the need to fly over the realm known to elves as the Lianreida, and to men as the Forbidden Lands. There was something he needed to see.
He wheeled the chariot over the forest, searching for some sign of the battle that had begun near the time Aravare had been attacked. Senar’s Watch, Larias recalled, had been established a hundred and fifty years ago when the men of Thargood had first intruded into the forest. It had been designated the farthest point the elves would allow men to walk—and still allow them to live.
Larias turned the chariot further to the east. Senar’s Watch would be close now. He could see the vague shimmer of light signifying the protection of elven magic over the portion of the Lianreida that they reserved for themselves. Larias frowned, wondering.
What could have been powerful enough to break through even the edge of that magic?He shook his head, annoyed at himself. It wasn't as if he had to ask. There could be no other explanation but Beauwallin or his minions—that he had divined for himself.
A sudden geyser of smoke and flame gouted out of the forest canopy ahead, and Larias dipped the chariot into the cover of the trees. He had no wish to be seen by mortals—even those as long-lived as the elves. He bent his magic to his need, and knew the chariot was cloaked. A brief feeling of relief washed through him; he had no desire for his latest creation to be destroyed before he had been able to give it life.
Larias landed at what he guessed was a couple of miles from the smoke and flame, dropping below the canopy, before a flight of grey-winged griffins burst from the trees over the elven fort. These griffins carried riders wearing a motley of dull-colored clothes. Occasionally the sun reflected softly from the dirty metal of a helm or corselet long uncleaned.
Had Larias not been ensuring his chariot was hidden, he would have seen a second flight of griffins follow the first. These were gold in color and the helms of their riders gleamed brightly in the afternoon sun. They wheeled after the first flight in a perfectly disciplined formation, before their riders rose in the stirrups of their saddles and flung a hail of long-shafted arrows after their dark-winged prey. The sunlight glistened momentarily off the arrowheads, but the missiles could not reach the fleeing griffins and the arrows fell harmlessly into the trees below.
Larias did not see. He spoke a command to the chariot, watching as it shrank until it fitted in the palm of his hand. As he bent to pick it up, he knew he had been discovered. There was an angry hum behind him as he straightened, and he sidestepped nimbly, reaching stretching back to snatch the arrow out of the air. As he turned, he muttered a gentle string of words and felt the arrow grow supple in his hand.
There was a woman standing, where no one had stood before. She was dressed in the forest-colored clothing of an elven tree-guard—not the wisest costume for a human in these lands. Her almond-shaped eyes were the color of warm honey, or golden leaves, and her face was the same shade as the bark of a young bronzewood. In the hand behind his back, Larias felt muscle grow beneath the arrow’s newly-formed covering of supple hide, felt the body thicken, and knew his work was almost done.
The woman regarded him from beneath the soft fringe of her night-colored hair and drew the bow to full nock.
“Name yourself, human, and state your business in the Lianreida.”
Larias smiled and took two steps towards her. They were so swift and light that the leaves beneath his boots did not have time to crumble. The woman reacted as he had known she would—she loosed the arrow. He stopped within arm’s reach of her, his smile turning feral as the arrow struck him in the chest, exploding into a myriad of splinter-sharp shards.
When she drew a third arrow from her quiver and nocked it, he spoke.
“My name is Larias, son of Kanort. I am the god of problem-solving and invention.”
As if to prove his point, he held out the serpent now coiled along his arm. He was glad he had thought to shield it from the second arrow’s remains. With its bronze-colored hide and the silver arrowhead marking in the center of its skull, it had become something beautiful. The woman recoiled, regarding him warily.
“You don’t look like a god.”
“And you are no more human than those at Saran’s Watch.”
She conceded this with a smile and dropped the spell concealing her elven form.
“I am not. I returned from human lands this morning. Prove to me that you are the god you claim to be, and not merely a mage with the gift of illusion, and I might let you live.”
His mother would have disapproved, Larias knew, but the elf was beautiful—and brave, not to mention a servant of the elven gods. He noted Fianrei’s symbol resting between her breasts as he took the chariot from inside his tunic and dropped it at her feet. She did not stoop to retrieve it, but waited while he snapped his fingers and mouthed the word that would bring the chariot to full-size. She took a step away as it grew.
When it was still, and she could see that it would not change again, she regarded him across its back. He was surprised to see scorn in her eyes.
“I asked you to prove to me that you are a god,” she spat, “not that you are a talented magician with an aptitude for making spectacular toys.”
“At least you admit that it is spectacular,” Larias replied, then stepped around to the front of the chariot and laid his hands on either side of the 'face' that formed a proud prow for the serpentine body of the vehicle. The markings carved and molded along its sides depicted the many-legged, viper-headed form of some strange lizard. He set his forehead against the space between its eyes.
“Live,” he said, breathing into its partly-open mouth, “and serve me just a little while longer.”
When he stepped away from it, the creature remained still. For a heartbeat, Larias thought he had failed, but then the beast moved, uncoiling so that it could stretch, before turning its head to regard both the god and the elf to whom he spoke. At the sight of it, the elf grew pale, gently easing the tension in her bow. Still clutching the weapon and arrow in one hand, she reached out with her other to lean against the nearest tree.
“You are a god,” she said, “but what brings you here?”
“I have to go,” Larias said, ignoring her question. “I will speak to your gods and ask if you can be made a guardian to the garden I will create in order for this creature to feed.”
The creature turned its head back towards him and flicked a tubular tongue across his face. The serpent coiled about his arm hissed. The elf appeared to be having trouble with her expression. Larias thought she tried to hide her amazement at his audacity, even as she gave him a single nod to acknowledge his words.
Now that his chariot was flesh and blood, Larias felt a peculiar reluctance in riding it towards Saran’s Watch. While it had been a mechanical thing, he had been able to ride it with impunity, knowing any harm to it could be repaired. Now that it lived, it could die—already he was beginning to regret his delay in the clearing.
The she-elf had taken up too much of his time and, speaking of elves…
He could hear the sounds of battle and felt the muscles of his mount grow tense beneath him. It crooked its head around, regarding him with one eye, while watching the trail ahead with the other. Again, its tubular tongue touched his cheek and this time Larias sensed apprehension.
“It will be all right,” he told it. “This time I won’t be seen…”
He stopped, suddenly aware that he had been seen, observed when he had wished to move in anonymity—and that he had felt the arrow’s touch even though it had exploded into fragments before coming near his chest. Now that…
There was a sudden cry of fear from the trees ahead. Larias frowned. Warriors did not usually cry out like that—no matter what race claimed them.
Nudging his creature forward, he urged it to the edge of the cleared space in which the elven fortress stood, then turned it sideways so that he sat at the very edge of the clearing. What he saw made his stomach turn.
Dark creatures were descending from the skies, their once-feathered wings now scaled by advanced pinions of hollow bone; their talons suddenly extending into scythes, as they opened their beaks to scream. Larias shouted denial at their vocal magicks, and found his voice blending with the sound they made. He roared with all the energy of his godhood, negating the effects of their cry, if not the effect of seeing them. Then he slid from his creature's back, pushing it away from the battle scene and concealing himself behind a young tree as it glided into the safety of a distant thicket of saplings.


*   *   *


An elven commander, Tanalir, glanced towards the place where Larias hid and frowned, but he had more important things on his mind. The beasts had landed and were advancing on his troops. He had no time for the figure he may or may not have glimpsed on the clearing’s edge. He had to survive and bring enough troops through that the reinforcements he had sent for, found they had someone left to reinforce.
For an instant, he wanted to curse the limitations of the mages who had been supposed to support him, then he remembered the pallor of their faces and how one of their number had depleted himself so badly that he had collapsed to the forest floor with little hope of being revived.
It had been the one warning the mages had been unable to ignore. Magelord Darkenoak had walked amongst them, sending some back to the elven city for recuperation and coordinating the arrival and incorporation of others until he had been outranked and commanded to return himself.
That had been just before their second attack on the walls.
Gods! Why didn’t we make a secret way in? Was it arrogance to think the fort would never need to be retaken?
Tanalir shook his head, praying that the reinforcements would arrive with speed as the front rank of his troops met the winged horrors stalking towards them. He had thought these griffins banished, pursued by a unit of mounted riders and gone from the battle. He wondered what had happened until he saw how his fixed formations fell beneath the dark creatures’ claws.
“Dance of Leaves!” he roared, his voice carried across the battlefield by the last piece of magic Magreilor had been able to give him.
His troops responded with practiced ease, scattering like autumn leaves to fight independently. Even so he saw that he would lose them. He raised the bow he carried and began to lay down the covering fire his men required in order to disengage. Part of the Dance was the ability to break away and regroup. With the odds they were facing, they would have to disperse and harry the griffons as best they could until help arrived. One of his arrows drove itself deeply into an undead beast advancing on one of his warriors. Another of the once-griffins saw its companion stumble under the arrow’s impact, and raised its head from the elf it was savaging. The trooper writhed in helpless agony, pinned by its claws to the ground.
Fianrei’s mercy, where have they grown so large?
The beast scanned the row of troops lined before and beside him. Its eyes stopped when they came to him, and it screamed in outrage as Tanalir sighted on it, his bow at full draw. His arrow caught it in the neck and it stretched its beak wide and screamed again.
For a heartbeat, Tanalir thought the beast was going to scream and die. Instead, it ignored the arrow and bent its head to the soldier trapped beneath its talons. Before the elven warrior could cry out, the griffin had raised its foot and disemboweled him with its beak. Tears clouded Tanalir’s eyes and he fired another three arrows into the hideous beast before it came to him that his arrows were having no effect. It was then that he heard the same voice chanting that had answered the griffins’ screams with a roar.
Tanalir did not recognize the chant, only knew that its results would envelope good soldiers as it enveloped the once-living creatures they sought to destroy. With trembling fingers, he nocked his next arrow and prepared to fire. If he could not kill the murdering beasts, perhaps he could blind or cripple them so that his men could escape. He did not get to see if his plan would have worked.
The chanting stopped and a sheet of flame spread from the edge of the clearing to engulf both elven warrior and undead griffin in a conflagration of heat and vengeance. The intensity of the light made Tanalir shield his face from the flame, and the heat drove him stumbling back to the shelter of the trees. He was dimly aware of an even greater flare of light following the first, but he could not be sure. Instead, he rolled into a crouch, one hand feeling for his bow, the other pressed against his eyes until the pain subsided.
When he could see again, Tanalir saw that the clearing that had once held the fortress named Saran’s Watch was empty. Its center was a mass of blackened ground that smoked and steamed. There was no sign of his men or the undead creatures they had faced. There was no sign of the fortress itself.
Tanalir blinked, pushing himself to his feet and nocking an arrow to the bow. He pushed warily clear of the bushes that had sheltered him and stepped onto the scorched ground. The heat that radiated through the soles of his boots made him step back onto uncharred soil.
With a sweep of his hand, he stayed the advance of the soldiers beginning to emerge from the forest’s edge. Some, he noted, had drawn their swords while others held bows, half-nocked, like himself. A lone, man-shaped figure walked with apparent aimlessness through the smoke. He seemed to be accompanied by a many-legged serpent. Both looked impervious to the heat.
While the elves watched, a second figure joined the man and his beast, the sweet scent of her perfume twining through the smoke, to touch their nostrils. Tanalir stared in disbelief.
Fianrei?
Again he caught the drift of her perfume. This time he lowered his bow and knelt on one knee.
“Lady of light?”
He was unaware he had spoken aloud until the soldiers nearest him turned uncertainly in his direction. Their movement drew his attention, although their faces were puzzled, and did not reflect the awe he felt.
“Commander?”
He glared at the soldier who had spoken. The trooper seemed oblivious to his anger, but stepped closer.
“What is it?”
“Why do you kneel?”
Tanalir stared at him in disbelief.
“Can’t you see them?” he asked, astonishment in his voice. “Didn’t you catch the scent of her perfume?”
The soldier shook his head.
“No, my lord.”
The commander glanced back towards the smoke. Now, the clearing seemed empty, devoid of anything except the smoke. Shaking his head and hiding his disappointment as best he could, Tanalir rose to his feet and signaled for his men to follow him, away from the smoke and stench of their defeat.
When he had found a space large enough for them to gather, he was able to note the losses they had sustained.
“Saran’s Watch has fallen,” he told them, and ignored the wry smiles his words brought to the faces of his few remaining veterans. “I saw the goddess Fianrei walking in the smoke of the clearing.”
This brought soft snorts of disbelief. Again, Tanalir ignored them.
“She was with another. He was accompanied by a many-legged serpent.”
“A… dragon?”
The words were carefully spoken, almost devoid of the mockery they usually brought. Dragons had not been seen in the Lianreida since shortly after the elementals had withdrawn their magic from the world. The commander shook his head.
“Not a dragon,” he said, “just a many-legged serpent, slightly taller than the male he walked beside.”
“The fortress is gone.”
It was another speaker, one of his older veterans this time.
“Yes, Sularn, it is gone. We will rebuild it once…”
Again the subtle perfume of the goddess reached him. He stopped, suddenly aware that his soldiers were no longer paying him any attention; they were staring past him at someone else and moving, as though trapped in a dream, to their knees.
“My lady.” Sularn whispered. "My lord, forgive me, I did not see…"
The commander turned, feeling the chill of apprehension working its way through him. His face was white when he finally faced the other way, and was able to look the manifestation of his goddess in the eye.
“Oh my lady,” he groaned, and sank once more to his knees.
Her smile was gentle as she stepped to one side to reveal the man-like god standing behind her.
“This is Larias,” she said, by way of introduction. “He is a problem-solver in the world of men, and an inventor. I have renamed him Lantaris, the elven defender against undead, god of elemental flame, and creator of creatures and gardens. He will become both by the moon's third showing from now.”
Raising his eyes so that he could see of whom the lady spoke, Commander Tanalir noted a tall male elf whose skin was a rich golden green and whose eyes gleamed with the color of an azurian sky. A mane of golden hair hung past the elf’s shoulders and fire shimmered around the hilt of the blade he carried at his belt. Fire shimmered also around the bow he held in one hand and around the feathered shafts of the arrows in his quiver.
Tanalir remembered the fire that had engulfed the clearing.
“My men,” he whispered.
The new god looked towards him.
“They walk my realm as we speak. I could do nothing more. They will be remembered for the sacrifice that was made, and not for becoming as the creatures they fought.”
Tanalir waited. Beside the new god, Fianrei was still. The commander was aware of her perfume as the new god, Lantaris, began speaking once more.
“I will plant a garden where Saran’s Watch once stood,” Lantaris said, “and populate it with creatures of my own making. A temple will be built in the garden’s centre, and twin fortresses at its outer edge. One will be renamed Saran’s Watch, the other will be known as Talek’nar’Tanalirmarn.”
There was a flare of light, mirrored in a burst of flame. The goddess’s voice mingled with that of the god as they departed.
“Guard the clearing until the first flowers bloom and twin fortresses guard the entry to Lianreida once again.”
“Look after my beast.”
“Walk in the light ways.”
"Become protectors of the cleansing flame, warriors against that which walks when it is dead, and…"
"Gardeners of the Lianreida."
Talek’nar Tanalirmarn. Talek’nar Tanalirmarn.The name echoed in Tanalir’s mind, overlaying the orders of god and goddess. As he rose to his feet, there was awe on the faces of his men when they regarded him again. For a few seconds of perfect silence he returned their stares, then he spoke.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he growled. “I’m not the only one given a commission from the gods. You were all included in the naming.”
Talek'nar Tanalirmarn. The Fortress of Tanalir's Warriorguard.
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Gods in the Lianreida can be found as part of a chapter in Shadow Trap, the second book in the Shadow trilogy. It is also available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: books2read.com/u/3J8Jwg.
You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?