~45~
Raze strode from the palace and squinted at the bright sun plating the sea in silver. He pulled his cowl up against the blistering rays. Myriad choices lay before him. He hung onto the dream that Bel survived somewhere in Ezar, that Sajem hadn’t expended the effort to ship her to the lands of the Far South or east or west. And did it matter if she toiled on foreign soil? He would search Tegir, and when he’d walked every street and inquired at every shop, he’d aim his feet to the next city and the next. If he reached the far borders of Valcore without finding her, he’d board a ship and venture into the lands of the southern seas, Anchi or Arrale, even Okara to the west.
His attention dropped to the purse. He loosened the cord and peered inside at the gleaming gold, enough to sustain him for a few years, more than he’d expected and another kindness from a wise woman.
Draeva stepped beside him, a hand resting on the hilt of her sword. She too stared at the sea.
“What will you do now?” Raze asked.
She shrugged. “Join a crew here in Ezar. Or go west or south. Johzar and I viewed the world through the same lens. I feel different without him.”
“He wasn’t so bad for a slaver,” Raze said. “Neither are you.”
“We’re a dying breed.” She smirked and handed him a crumpled letter. “Could be worse, I suppose.”
“What’s this?” Raze turned the missive over in his hands.
“It came for Johzar, but nobody knew how to find him. The steward passed it to me. It’s from a woman named Shonra, an ex-slaver.” Draeva looked at him askance. “In response to his inquiry.”
Raze blinked at her and shook the letter open. He read the words through and smiled.
~
The islands of the Shattered Sea parted for the city of Yozar, another cliffside metropolis with a narrow quay of wave-battered rubble. From the galley’s rail, the place rambled as far as Raze’s eyes could see, its buildings stunted but not crude. Only the onion-shaped palace interrupted his view of the horizon, its turrets and towers cutting the clouds. His impatience stretched the three-day journey from Tegir into what seemed a year.
Mooring the ship demanded courage in light of the crashing waves, as did the ride up the rock wall. Cages on massive winches and giant chains carted people and cargo up and down in counterbalanced pairs. It was an engineering feat, skillfully maneuvered—and terrifying.
Raze exited the rattling box with a sigh of relief. He inquired about directions, and despite a rumbling belly and stinking like an unbathed sailor, he set out at a brisk pace. A mix of anticipation and anxiety pulsed through his heart uncontained. The balance of his life hinged on what lay ahead.
It required an hour to find the estate on the tangled lanes of the northern district, a stone mansion girded with a high wall and felted with ivy. Not what he expected of a slaver, and for a dreadful moment, he worried he might stand before the wrong home or might have been led astray altogether.
He sucked in his trepidation and strode to the gate, willing, this once, to claim his lordly title. The guards at the gate stopped him, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You have business here?”
“I do if this is the home of Mistress Shonra. I’m Lord Raze Anvrell of Kestrel, here on behalf of the slaver Johzar. I bear a letter sent by the lady.” He kept the tattered missive in his pocket. “If you would inquire about an audience, I would be grateful.”
The explanation sufficient, one of the guards retreated to the palatial home, and minutes later, Raze stood in the grand foyer. A middle-life woman with gray glittering in her hair posed in the doorway of a bright salon. Her autumn-colored attire covered her tattoos, but not entirely.
“Johzar is dead, isn’t he?”
“He is,” Raze replied. “He died fighting for the Empress.”
“Danzell.” She grimaced at his travel attire, rolled her eyes, and invited him in. “I knew she had entranced him the moment I saw them together. For a slaver, he was sotted with sentimentality. How did he die?”
Raze took a seat. “Sajem killed him.”
She stared out the window and sighed. “I assume he’s dead, too?”
“Ai.” Raze withdrew the letter and presented it to her. “I seek a woman named Belizae. You sent this letter to Johzar.”
She studied the note. “Quite a reward offered for her whereabouts.”
Raze drew in a long leisurely breath, hiding the knot in his chest. Johzar had never mentioned a reward, and Raze grappled for a response. “He told me you would be reasonable.”
“You’re a liar, Lord Raze. I’ve never been reasonable in my life, and he knew it.” She raised her hand and snapped her fingers at a servant in the foyer. “Fresh tea. We’re perishing of thirst in here.”
“Ai, mistress,” the girl said and hurried off.
Shonra blinked at him. “I wasn’t born last year. The truth is you don’t know shit, or you would have spit out the true cost, which is nothing. I owed Johzar a debt, and it is now paid in full, my conscience clear.”
“My apologies. In truth, he died before your letter arrived.”
“Well, I suppose you would like to see her, your Belizae.”
Raze nodded. “I would.”
“I never told her about the inquiry or my letter. I didn’t want to raise her hopes in case no one ever showed up. I stole her from her owner in Valcore, and as far as she’s concerned, I’m a cranky woman who doesn’t tolerate any guff.” She found her feet, and when he stood, she grasped his hand. Her face softened, tears dewing her eyes. “To be honest, Lord Raze, I grew fond of Johzar over the years. I would give anything to see him here today. He was my friend.”
Raze might have echoed the emotion, but she strode off through the door, calling over her shoulder. “Follow me.”
He did as requested and trailed her down a corridor, through the kitchen, and out the back door. The manor’s rear yard, like that of most noble houses, was the purview of the servants who kept the home functioning. An outdoor hearth, the well, and a medley of outbuildings crowded the expanse of dirt beside a modest garden. Chickens ran willy-nilly, and somewhere there would be a cow.
Bel knelt in the garden, face tilted up to the sun, eyes closed. She hummed a quiet melody he’d heard before, a song of praise for the day unfolding before her. Around her, the fertile soil lay freshly turned beside a basket of potatoes. Dirt smudged her bare feet and hands, and a long braid roped down her back. How he loved her, the ache of losing her and finding her rushing up his spine to his head and making him dizzy. Love and life felt precarious and infinitely precious. He resolved never to waste it.
The world faded around him. His eyes only for her, he walked to the garden’s edge and blocked the sun. She frowned at the shadow, gazed up at him, and leapt to her feet with a laugh.
~
Autumn at the freehold swirled with the Ravenwood wind, leaves torn from the trees and quilting the yard with color. In the mornings, the fog frosted the hills in lace, and the stream trickled between fringes of crisp ice. Raze split wood, his ax swinging with a steady rhythm. Left, right, left, right, body swaying and balanced, an old habit he’d picked up from Samoth. The beat of an ax hitting wood had a familiar sound. Like a heartbeat.
He'd arrived home to a nearly completed barn, thanks to Vax and the new farm hands, and the help of Shara and her brothers. Other chores had fallen behind in the effort, thus the ax and the hours working his back, hours he didn’t mind but for the faint stiffness in his hand.
Rozenn had decided to stay on at Shara’s. His deep affection for her lingered but not a connection she shared; he wasn’t Samoth after all. A neighborly friendship would serve them both well.
His horses remembered him, greeted him with nuzzles and wet breath. With Samoth’s grace, he danced with two new geldings he and Bel had purchased in Avanoe courtesy of Danzell’s gold. He whispered to them, communing with a primal understanding he sensed in all creatures. He no longer required a sword, and Samoth’s true gift for living
a mindful life had surfaced in the peace of home.
Briyon’s deep love of the freehold soothed his troubled soul and lightened the burden of guilt and pain he’d carried home. In the evenings he whittled, in love with the quiet beauty manifested in the act of creation. Briyon once told him he might need the serenity of the old man’s soul. Raze had thought his mentor referred to quelling the anger and bitterness of his youth but understood now that it was to ease the despair and hard choices of adulthood.
The sweet scent of woodsmoke hovered in the air. He set down his ax and knuckled his back, enjoying a break before stacking the scattered logs. The emerald cap of his soulstone caught a glint of sunlight. He peered down where it lay against his chest. With little thought, he lifted the cord over his head and hung the pendant on a nail sticking out from the shed’s weathered boards.
“Ah, a free soul,” his wife’s voice called from the yard. He grinned at the woman he loved beyond words, a feeling utterly his own. Wrapped in a shawl, Bel tiptoed over the frozen ruts, a steaming cup of tea between her hands. She had wed him and moved into the cabin until that day when he built a room at the back of the new barn… someday.
“Finally.” He lent the soulstone a glance and chuckled, accepting the steaming mug. “I meant to a while ago. Today became the perfect day.”
She wove her arms around him.
In her embrace, he let go of the gravity of the world and entered a sweet and natural stillness, another chance at life blossoming around him even as the winter landscape grew cold. She had swept him into the flow of love, and he would journey with her through all its possible unfoldings.
Here in the foothills of the Ravenwood, he stepped back and reflected on his life, gaining a rounder perspective of himself. Talaith’s Echo had once told him that the moments of greatest risk, those when all might be lost, were also the times when transformation occurred. He’d discovered that regardless of how he’d been damaged, deep inside him lived a sanctuary of love, faith, and belonging. Briyon and Samoth abided there, but others as well: Lanya and Terrill, his mother and father. His legacy of souls. They had all shaped him through their love and kindness, honor and courage, and he couldn’t fully accept himself without embracing them. Despite all the outward separation, love still bound them together.
In Bel’s arms, he was wholly enfolded, his diverse selves merging into one: the one he was born with, the myriad versions molded over time, and those he had chosen. He was child-fresh, mountain-grown, sweat-cleansed, moon-hearted, and soul-loved. He’d come into the world loved, and love quietly and persistently sustained him. With Bel, with himself, he surrendered to the knowledge that he’d returned to his soul’s home, one of the heart.
~The End~
Ready for Another Adventure
Catling’s Bane
The Rose Shield Series
In the tiers of Ellegeance, the elite Influencers’ Guild holds the power to manipulate emotions. Love and fear, pain and pleasure, healing and death mark the extremes of their sway, but it’s the subtle blends that hook their victims’ hearts. They hide behind oaths of loyalty and rule the world.
A child born in the grim warrens beneath the city, Catling rues the rose birthmark encircling her eye. Yet, it grants her the ability to disrupt the influencers’ sway. Established methods of civil control disintegrate before her. She’s a weapon desired by those who reign and those who rebel.
To the Influencer’s Guild, she’s an aberration, a threat. They order her death and thus the betrayals begin. One woman protects and trains her, plotting to use her shield to further imperial goals. No longer a helpless child, Catling has other plans. As chaos shakes the foundations of order and rule, will she become the realm’s savior? Or its executioner?
Welcome to a world of three moons, a sentient landscape, rivers of light, and tier cities that rise from the swamps like otherworld flowers. A planet of waterdragons, where humans are the aliens living among three-fingered natives with spotted skin. Where a half-blood converses with the fog and the goddess plans her final reckoning.
Follow Catling’s journey as she grows from childhood into the deadly force that shapes the future. She is the realm’s shield, an influencer, assassin, healer, mother, and avenger. And all she wants is to go home.
Catling’s Bane
Prolog
Darkest Night.
The ironwood pier below Mur-Vallis pointed like a sooty finger over the Blackwater’s gleaming luminescence, a river of light, bright enough to whittle by. Wraiths of fog pirouetted across the surface, trailing veils of white lace. Raker lounged against the piling where he’d tethered his boat, keeping an idle eye out for thieves. Not that anyone would bother his craft this night, not with finer prizes left unattended. Well-rigged riverboats and ferries floated at the wharf, thunking and clinking above the current’s hushed whispers.
With a bone-handled knife, he carved splinters from a wood waterdragon no larger than his thumb. The solitude suited him, removed from the warrens’ chaos that crowded the dingy expanse below the city’s lowest tier. The welcome there was cold anyway, harsh enough to get a half-blood gutted. His slanted green eyes and three-fingered hands gave his mixed heritage away. Half-human, half-fenfolk was a rare breed.
The three pylons supporting Mur-Vallis soared into the vast night sky. Their lighted tiers lay open like petals on an alien flower, soft-edged and overlapping, the upper layers diminishing in size while increasing in opulence.
Or so he’d heard. No one he knew had climbed higher than the first tier, and then, only for a hanging.
He returned to his whittling, scoring the supple wood around the waterdragon’s tail. In the darkness nearby, a baby cried; a woman chided harsh with impatience. He didn’t trouble to glance up, and they didn’t venture near. Most Ellegeans fled to the tiers or burrowed into the warrens on Darkest Night, the lot of them superstitious when the moons vanished from the sky.
To riverfolk, rafters, and seafarers, the moonless night was far from dark. A boundless sky sparkled with stars so fat and round a man might mistake them for pearls. The rivers, swamps, and Cull Sea shone brighter, the waters rife with luminescence, creatures of light glittering like the dust of gems. A radiant current flowed and flowered around him, merging and bursting outward in shifting patterns.
The child’s sobs droned in his head, invading the night’s peace. He set the waterdragon aside and breathed. None of his concern, he shut out the clamor.
“She’s mine,” the mist exhaled in his ear, voice soft as rustling leaves.
His head dropped back, and he closed his eyes, ignoring the touch of lips on his tapered ear, the ghostly caress of his chest. The fog played tricks, breathed secrets, and yet when he looked, no one was ever there.
“Careful not to drown her, my sweet,” the voice whispered.
He brushed the fog aside, leaned over the pier’s edge, and dipped his hand in the water. As it always did, the luminescence fled his fingers, then collapsed around his wrist and collected on his skin. He cinched his trap closed and pulled up the basket, eyes on the living light pouring through the woven reeds. Three finned eels squirmed in the dark interior, inky skin aglow. He grinned, sliced off their heads, and tossed the slick bodies into a bucket on his boat…
Amazon Link: Catling’s Bane
Sunwielder
In a land on the brink of war, Gryff Worden finds his family slaughtered in his farmyard. Mortally wounded, he stumbles upon a timekeeper, an old woman of a foreign land who tracks the infinite paths of each life. She offers him a sunwield, a medallion that returns him to the critical choices that altered his life's journey. Now his story remakes itself through the sunwield, returning him repeatedly to moments of decision and death, his old life gone, the purpose of the medallion burning his chest forgotten. As he uncovers the power of the sunwield, new choices lead him on an epic journey through war, death, friendship, life, and love.
Sunwielder
Prolog
The warrior
rode in silence. Black oaks and silvergreen, dark with summer leaves, swathed the trail in shifting shadow. Shafts of sunlight speared the forest floor, altered only by the graceful sway of branches in the heated wind. She directed the mare with her knees, an arrow nocked in the recurve bow, a full quiver hanging from her pommel. A short sword, with a breath of a curve, rested in its scabbard at her belt, the ornate guard and curling quillon studded with moonstones.
Even this far from the battlefield, the land of Aldykar was riddled with brigands, deserters, and the soldiers hunting them. Yet she wore no armor, only the leathers of her homeland, tawny jerkin and breeches, soft-soled boots laced to the knee. Her hair, the red of old blood, flared in the filtered light, brushing her cheeks. Slanted gray eyes, pale as winter clouds, scanned the dark recesses of rock and fern in the hollows beneath the trees. The meeting place lay in a foreign wilderness, a place not unknown to her for she’d traveled the roadways and trails between Edriis and Mastrelle before, as maiden and warrior. Why the old woman chose the woods of Casbonny caused her wonder and filled her with wariness.
An owl’s solemn voice hooted in the moving shadows. The clearing lay ahead through columns of black bark, the round glade sunbathed and thick with fine grass. A young silvergreen grew in its center, branches filigreed steel in the pool of light. Her grandmother stood before the tree, arms at her side, gray hair plaited at her back. An odd expression imprinted her smooth face, a blend of relief, hope, and terrible resignation. “I am alone, Estriilde,” she said.
Songbirds quipped and called in the trees, offering no warning of predators. Estriilde relaxed her bowstring and slipped the arrow into her quiver. A long leg swung over the saddle, and she landed lightly at the shadow’s edge. “We live today, Grandmother,” she said in greeting.
Legacy of Souls Page 29