Unfettered (Unfettered #1)

by Shawn Speakman

My thoughts at the time were an odd mingling of confused (“What? You can do that?”) and thrilled (“Yeah! Take that, goddamn cancer!”).

And by buying this book, you’ve helped too. Thanks for that. You’re a good person.

All right, I’ve wasted enough of your time here. On to the stories.

I would likely have to declare medical bankruptcy, which would result in the fiscal ruination of the following decade. I had to do something.

When the tests were all done, he was sent home knowing nothing more than he had when he arrived beyond the fact that he did not care ever to go through such an ordeal again.

His parents might have been right; he might have imagined it all. But then why was he remembering it so clearly now?

Normally I miss deadlines like a storm trooper misses Jedi. But I actually got this story in to Shawn months ahead of when I said I would.

“What will they think of next?”

“It’s like chess,” Major said. “Sometimes you protect a piece, sometimes you sacrifice one.” “It’s a bit arrogant, isn’t it, treating the world like our personal chessboard?” Major gave a lopsided smile. “Maybe, a bit.”

After the hundreds of games those four had played, couldn’t they see it?

Even Major looked on him with that calculating light in his eyes. Did Gerald even realize that Major’s passion was for tactics rather than outcome?

He wore a happy, silly smile on his face. They might have been in a park, strolling along a gentle river in a painting.

What shall Vralia become if he succeeds? And worse, if he fails? What then?

Civil war imminent. Cease all trade negotiations immediately.

“You have to be bold,” said a voice behind him, and Briar turned to see his father. “When I was in Sharaj, the boy who was too timid went hungry.”

Tears began to stream down Briar’s cheeks. Would his father cast him out as well, if he wet himself in fear?

“Brave,” he muttered to himself, knowing the lie for what it was.

I imagine you’ve heard the adage, “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.” Well, the phrase was coined by William Congreve in his play The Mourning Bride: Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.

I’ve read, that things inanimate have mov’d, And, as with living Souls, have been inform’d, By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.

What then am I? Am I more senseless grown Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe! ’Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs. Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night The Silent Tomb receiv’d the good old King; He and his Sorrow...

Why am not I a...

So, thank you, Shawn, for the opportunity to write this story. It’s helped me strike an inner chord. One I still hear.

The men exchanged scant looks of mirth, as if the joke were as tired as the men themselves.

“War is always dire,” he said flatly.

With one hand holding forward her cowl, his sister, Jemma, held something out to him. “Take it,” she said. They stood on the west side of Descant in the shade of mid-evening. A pleasant after-rain freshness filled the air. “What is it?” Divad asked, knowing very well what she proffered.

He’d been at Descant only a year, but in that year his life had gotten busy.

He hadn’t been home in months. Whenever she came, her gift was the same. Into his hand, Jemma dropped a pomegranate, its skin dry and pocked. Around it a note had been wrapped after the fashion of his father, who sold damaged fruit on the edge of the merchant district, where street carts were permitted. His and Jemma’s gifts on their name days and any othe...

“Let me pour you a drink. Settled nerves make better music.” “You and your music metaphors. A teaching technique, yeah? Well, Maesteri, you then are Descant’s bow.”

“You found a way to sing death to a Shoarden man. We need your help.”

I wanted to say something. I wanted to say I would try. But my mind felt like an open wound that even a stir of wind would sear.

I sang the lament, gathering quiet strength with each phrase. I lent it a measure of absolute value.

And I wondered if in so doing, somewhere ma and sa felt my song, though like Shoarden men, they would never hear it.

Questions vied inside me. Could I let fly my own weapon, and sing the Sellari song into the bodies of the innocent? On the other hand, could I let them rain down death on my own people?

Oh dear merciful music, what I was prepared to do.

You mean the kid with no team spirit? LC thought, and he chuckled again, and this time it was okay because it seemed like he was joining in with the rising cry for the Mariners.

The young boy wanted the game over; he wanted to take his trophy, earned or not, and go home.

A fine Keeper of Memory he would be one day; he couldn’t even keep track of his most important possession!

She didn’t understand at all. How could she not have been touched by war? Were they so isolated that the Dahak hadn’t found them yet? It seemed impossible.

Her voice in that moment seemed wiser than her years, her face so pinched with distrust that Daen regretted his surge of honesty.

And what if her family had been turned? For whom did her family breed dragons?

The voice of young Maia repeated in his head, again and again, If you’re at war, why are you here gathering berries? Why had Mer sent him into the mountains?

What am I doing? Asha, forgive my addled brain…

Mer’s last words to Daen—You are the Keeper of Memory now. What would he do? Where would he go? Trenna was taken, Cinvat overrun.

All of it hauntingly familiar. Too familiar: his dream of death this very morning.

I should have spent any free time I had studying or working on my Spellwright trilogy, but instead I found myself haunted by a new story that would try to capture something of what I had seen during the year.

Estás esperando a una muchacha para levantar su falda?”

www.danielabraham.com/2012/02/01/the-dogs-project-introduction.

“Go dancing,” Alexander joked. “That’s the spirit, my man.”

Most dogs go through their whole lives and never bite anyone. And how many therapy dogs are there, right? Seeing-eye dogs. Companion dogs. Most dogs are good.”

in fact may have been Dagda’s Cauldron—a far cry from the cup of Christ—I could not resist the opportunity to explore that idea in “The Chapel Perilous.”