Snippet

Yes, I've been quiet for awhile.  The writing goes by fits and starts, but that's nothing new.  I hope that, finally, I've gotten over the psychological backlash from last year's riding accident.  Perhaps I just got unused to hard mental work, which writing is.  My imagination just didn't seem to function properly for the longest time.  Mind you, as soon as I hit another block, I'll probably be moaning again.

Stable news:  Countess is still lame, but (finally) getting better.  Meanwhile, two other horses in the barn have been poisoned by eating box-elder leaves pawed up from the snow.  Usually, this will kill within a few days, but as they are still alive after a week, we have hopes for them,  Odd, that vets have only recently recognized this danger.

Meanwhile, here's a belated trick-or-treat from the next novel:
Chapter 1:  Gothregor

Spring 50 – Summer 15

I

Jame paused in the doorway of her brother’s tower study, blinking into the gloom.  The room seemed empty, yet it breathed fitfully as the wind ebbed and flowed through it.  In the open western window, up the chimney, through the doorway to the spiral stair in which she stood, out again, ahhhh …
Papers rustled on the desk.  Embers flared on the hearth, the last of a fire set on this chill evening in late spring.
Perhaps I won’t have to face him just yet, she thought.  Oh, first, for food, sleep, time …
“Tori?”
“Here.”
His voice came from the shadows near the window where he stood so still that her eyes had slipped over him.  Back turned, hands clasped behind him, he was staring down into the inner ward, as perhaps he had been ever since she and her tired, hungry ten-command had ridden into Gothregor at dusk.  Below, Brier Iron-thorn would be dismantling their little caravan, the cadets sent to dinner, their meager baggage to their new quarters, their mounts to the subterranean stable.  The wind gusted again, bringing a grumble of thunder.
“So you’ve come at last,” he said.
“As you see.”  Or would, she thought, if you turned around.
But he didn’t.
“I won’t ask if you had a pleasant journey.  How is your shoulder?”
Jame flexed it, and winced.  The broken collarbone would have healed by now if not for the past thirty-odd days in the saddle, despite Bel-tairi’s gentle gate.  As for riding the rathorn Death’s-head, forget it.
“Never had a broken bone before, have you?” Harn Grip-hard had said.  “Everything will seem worse than it is until you get used to it.”
Get used to it?  Did one ever?  Without considering the matter, she had always depended on her natural resilience and agility, if not her strength.  Now she felt as fragile as spun glass, about to break.  That, in turn, further shortened her temper.
“We made the best time we could,” she said, trying not to sound defensive.  “There were delays in Kothifir.  Then it’s a long way north to the Riverland.”
“So I remember, having ridden it many times.”
Was he reminding her that, despite the fact that they were twins, he was at least ten years her senior?  They had always been rivals, even as children, when they should have been equals, even friends.  Now he was Lord Knorth and Highlord of the Kencyrath while she was only a second year randon cadet.  The gap between them kept widening.
“I thought we had agreed,” she said, then bit her lip, vexed.  She hadn’t meant to lash out so soon, if at all; sometimes, though, he made her so very angry, and she had waited a long time to tell him so.
Torisen’s shoulders twitched.  “Agreed,” he said.  “On what?”
“That I was to qualify as a randon officer, if I could, with your approval and support.  But I have a year of training yet to go – if the Randon Council doesn’t kick me out, and they may.  Your summons has cost me my last season at Kothifir.”
“From what Harn Grip-hard tells me, you caused quite enough trouble there with the time that you had.”
Jame choked back a retort.  Dammit, that wasn’t fair.  She hadn’t triggered the failure of the Kencyr temple, or the civic disorder that had followed, or the descent of the Karnid horde upon Kothifir.  Things simply happened whenever she was around.  Should she tell him that she was potentially one of the three Tyr-ridan expected for millennia by their people?  Worse, she was a latent nemesis linked to That-Which-Destroys, the third face of their despised god.  Even without trying, how could she help but cause trouble?
… some things need to be broken …
That was hard to explain, however, when standing up to one’s knees in rubble.
And Tori hadn’t helped matters by summoning her back to Gothregor prematurely.