The Dragon Writers Collection

by DragonWritersCollective

  “The other dolt is yours to dispose of, my king,” the assassin said, bowing with such respect that it sent goose bumps rippling down the fool’s spine. “You may not ever be the King of Men, my friend, but you will always be the King of Fools. Didn’t it cross your mind that after King Rigert lost his head, they might block that passage up? What were you thinking?”

  The fool started to answer, but then saw the feet of the new fool protruding from underneath the cloth of the covered podium where the King had been speaking. “Bah!” he scoffed at the assassin, and cartwheeled away.

  The assassin laughed, “Be wise counsel to your new king, fool.” He climbed back onto the dragon’s lowered neck. “He is young and hasty, but good hearted, and fair. He will listen to you.”

  The old fool reached down to drag the new fool from under the table by the feet. He stopped, however, when the dragon leapt into the air, coming to hover just overhead.

  “Always remember, the king is but a glorified pawn. A true ruler of men needs no crown, only his wits, and a good heart. You have plenty of both, my friend, plenty of both.” With that, the dragon veered into the sky, and carried the assassin away.

  A while later, the King of Fools heard the voice of the Prince of the Isles speaking to him, softly. “He’s done, my fool. You’re done.” The prince looked down at the limp, bloody body of King Hamrick’s fool. “Come, let’s rest, and feast. Then we’ll try to rebuild what they destroyed.”

  “You’re just the prince of some little bitty islands,” the fool said, stupidly. “Why do you care about these people?”

  “Yesterday, I was only a prince,” the man said, as he helped the King of Fools to his feet. “Today I am the king of these people. King Hamrick was my uncle, and since he had no heir, the crown falls upon my head.”

  “Yesterday, I was trying to paint a picture from my mind, and rambling like an idiot,” the fool grinned. “But, today, I was also a king. Today, I was the King of Fools.”

  The new king smiled and laughed lightly. “Once a fool, always a fool,” he jested.

  “Aye,” the fool chuckled back. “Once the King of Fools, always the King of Fools. And don’t forget, the King of Fools is the jester of the Gods. He wallows in their favor!”

  “That he must,” the new king agreed. “That he must.”

  The end

  M. R. Mathias is the author of the best selling Wardstone Trilogy and The Saga of the Dragoneers you can find those books and more about the author at www.mrmathias.com

  About Morgen Rich:

  Morgen Rich grew up in the southwestern U.S., where the sky reminds humans just how small they really are. Staring up at a sky stretching into forever prompted her to wonder what was there, and thus, her writing career in speculative fiction began. She lives mostly in Pennsylvania with her husband and two Great Pyrenees, Bianca and Tahoe. On occasion, she lives in Lincoln, England.

  Morgen will be first to say that no author is an island. Fantasy by female authors Marion Zimmer Bradley, Octavia Butler, and Anne McCaffrey has had a strong influence on Morgen's imagination and writing. She'll tell you that The Mists of Avalon gave her a different perspective on Celtic medieval fantasy, that the Xenogenesis Trilogy showed her how complex human beings can be, and that The Dragonriders of Pern destroyed every notion she had of genre boundaries. She cherishes the insight, support, and camaraderie of fellow members of the Dragon Writers Collective--indie authors Brian Rathbone, MR Mathias, Tom Bielawski, and Scott Baughman. She promotes the work of women writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror through membership and committee service in the non-profit organization Broad Universe.

  Her current project is a speculative fiction series. It begins with Incorrigible: Secrets Past & Present, which was initially released as a serial novel. Incorrigible is also Book One of The Staves of Warrant, an epic science fantasy trilogy set in the Shifting Worlds universe. Books Two (Discordant: Kin Foreign & Familiar) and Three (Seditious: Promises Broken & Bound) will be available in 2014/2015.

  Incorrigible was a Quarter Finalist for the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

  Author websites and blog: www.morgenrich.com and www.DragonWritersCollective.com

  Twitter: @MorgenRich

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Morgen.Rich.Author-

  Website: www.morgenrich.com

  Incorrigible: Secrets Past & Present

  The Staves of Warrant Book One

  Part One / Entrapments

  Morgen Rich

  Bookmite Press

  Pennsylvania

  www.bookmitepress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013. Morgen Rich. All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bookmite Press.

  ebook ISBN 978-0-9892102-0-1

  First Edition.

  Cover design by Derek Murphy of Creativindie Covers

  CHAPTER ONE

  Seetans

  Gráinne Roisin Ferrane MacKenna Seetan had never imagined killing. Neither had her mother, nor her mother’s mother, nor her grandmother’s mother. Ferrane females had built a legacy of preserving life, a legacy so tightly woven into their family fabric that it had become instinct. For Gráinne, daughter of Arianna of Alanna of Adama, killing was genetically inconceivable. That was why her familial instinct now felt defective. What it told her simply wasn’t possible. She had become lethal.

  Gráinne fought for air as the foul odor of genocide wafted up to the slate courtyard of Vandovir Estate, filling her nostrils with the stench of burning hair and bone. “You have to stop them,” she coughed out.

  “As soon as you tell me where to find the Staves,” replied her husband.

  The scene unfolding across the channel in Gráinne’s homeland gripped her as tightly as the fingers of the hand she had curled over the stone railing to brace herself in a world that had turned surreal. Drifting smoke stung her eyes, but she couldn’t stop searching for escaping citizens. The glint of a sword caught her attention before it disappeared behind a puff of smoke. Through a break in the dense haze between her and the thatched roof cottages and brightly painted shoppes of the Old Village, a ragdoll-come-to-life-horror captured her stare: bodies with flailing arms and legs were being tossed like yesterday’s rubbish into burning heaps. She couldn’t form a thought that made any sense.

  “Look at me.” Slyxx Seetan growled as he grasped her chin and forced her face in his direction. “This is your last chance.”

  She glared into his laurel green eyes, eyes that needed no light to enhance their shininess, for Slyxx’s eyes flashed with the passion of whatever conviction he held at any given moment. At this moment, his passion was for the Keeper’ Staves, and his eyes brimmed with a glimmer that matched the unyielding nature of the passion spawning it.

  Gráinne swallowed, the dry lump in her throat scratching its way down. “I do not know where they are. And what difference would it make to have them? The Staves have not protected the island. Can you not see they have no magic?” She pointed down at the swarm of mercenary soldiers blossoming across the island like a river wild, flowing into winding lanes and empty courtyards, stone-paved roads and dirt paths. Stragglers smashed their way into algae-coated stone warehouses at the Docks of the Obdured and carried sacks and crates of goods back to their ship. The swarm surged in fits and broke off in streams to chase fleeing, child-laden women.

  She jerked her chin out of his fingertips. “What possible use could they be to you now? Your thugs have overrun the realm. Stop this!”

  A timber roof meeting a floor crashed in the distance, and Gráinne flinched.

  Slyxx spoke calmly, but the passion of his conviction, like that in his eyes, still infused his words. “You feign ignorance. You lived with the Order. You know their ways. Tell me
where the priestesses keep the Staves, Gráinne. Tell me, and I will have the General call back her army.”

  “Nowhere. They belong to the citizens, and the Keepers place them outside the doors to the Temple. The Keepers are not priestesses. You know all of this. Why are you . . . .”

  “The Staves, Gráinne. The priestesses don’t leave them lying about outside the Temple. They don’t leave them at all.”

  His words made no sense to Gráinne, and she didn’t have time to argue with him. Citizens were dying. “Then they are somewhere else,” she said, “and I will help you find them if you will just stop the soldiers. Please, Sly, please.” Grasping his arm, she curled her nails into his leather coat.

  Slyxx looked down at his wife’s slender fingers. “I want to believe you.”

  Her mind rushed through memories of her time with the Order but found nothing relating to the Keepers’ Staves. She could say the words convincingly. “I am telling the truth. I swear it.”

  Slyxx cocked his head, the tips of his dark brown hair scrunching when they reached the top of his shoulder. “If you took the Robe before you came here, that oath would prevail over all others. What you swear to after that would mean nothing to you, including the oath you swore when you became my wife. A priestess would never betray her own Order.”

  He was thinking, at least, and not demanding. Maybe she could tap into his reason. “Please, just stop the soldiers, and we will discuss this civilly. Your father was a Keeper. Perhaps he left a note about the Stave’s whereabouts?”

  Slyxx’s gaze searched Gráinne’s, and she caught of spark of hope amid the shimmering green that could be so penetrating as to be intimidating. When he shook his head, the hope disappeared, as if it had been shaken out of his gaze.

  “I want to believe you, but I would be a fool if I did. Even if you had no loyalty to the Order, you are who you are, and you will lie.”

  “I have kept my oath. I have remained here as your wife. Have I not?”

  Slyxx looked down and clasped Gráinne’s wrist, squeezing. When she opened her hand, he pulled his arm free of her grasp but tightened his own. “Wife?” He laughed. “You are a Seetan only by verdict, Gráinne. You have made that clear. And though a MacKenna by your mother’s choosing, you will always be a Ferrane by birth. You will say or do anything to hang onto the throne, and running your merry chase will only be a waste of time I do not have. Because you are my wife, I will say this only once more. Tell me where to find the Staves.”

  “I do not know!” She let go of the railing and tried to pry his meaty fingers off her wrist.

  “Then, my love, your ignorance will set seal to the death warrants of any who have survived thus far.” The massive male gestured delicately down at an island aflame but looked into his wife’s honey-brown, human eyes. He continued, but speaking over his shoulder, “General, finish the task. Burn everything—buildings, fields . . . animals.”

  Gráinne waded through a fog of disbelief. “I said I will help you find them. I promise.”

  Slyxx wheeled around to the mercenary officer standing behind him.

  Peering around Slyxx, Gráinne spied the General. From head to toe, nothing about the mercenary officer flowed smoothly. Her height gave the impression of stunted growth, as if she’d been shrunken in youth like a wet skin left to dry under a sweltering sun. The top of the General’s head barely stretched up to Slyxx’s waist. The Commander’s snow-white hair, greasy and mussed, contrasted sharply with her flawless complexion and tailored black uniform.

  The officer looked up at Slyxx.

  Slyxx’s voice resounded with authority. “Before they burn the rest of the buildings, have your men search for the Staves one more time.”

  The General gave a slow nod.

  “And General, they must remain intact. No missing jewels.”

  Why is he saying that? He knows the Keepers’ Staves have no jewels in them. None of this makes any sense. Her tone desperate and shaky, her words awkward with confusion, Gráinne called out to the officer, “No! Please, General. This is unnecessary. Surely, we can strike a bargain.”

  The short officer leaned enough to see around Slyxx’s midriff. She locked gazes with Gráinne.

  At first, the pitch black orbs staring back at Gráinne appeared barren and lifeless. A fraction of a second before the General clucked her tongue and then spoke, Gráinne knew otherwise. Shards of bitterness and hatred bristled in the mercenary’s eyes and then slunk back into hiding behind a flat stare.

  “Like mother, like daughter,” the General huffed, “beggars dressed as queens.” She broke eye contact and gave a clipped nod of affirmation to Slyxx. “As we agreed, Marquis.” She pivoted crisply and headed toward the castle’s gate. With a marked limp marring an otherwise perfect military stride, the Commander tramped past guards who fell silently into line behind her.

  “You planned this! You brought them here! For sticks?” Gráinne jerked her wrist out of Slyxx’s clenched hand.

  Slyxx’s voice floated toward Gráinne, whose gaze still followed the officer rounding the corner of the castle. “Now, about your offer to cooperate . . . .”

  “Noooooooooo!” Her nails slashed through the air toward Slyxx’s laurel eyes just before her world went as black as the inky aura permeating the air around the General, an aura that was about to reach out, clutch, and draw everyone and everything Gráinne loved into its murky wake.

  ***

  When opaque unconsciousness submitted to awakening’s dim light, Gráinne opened her eyes. Her body protested movement. Even breathing hurt. As her surroundings came into focus, she recognized the pleated tapestry overhead as the drapery of her bed. They are dead, and it is my fault. Her outstretched right arm recoiled at a sudden sting, and then her ears captured the calm tones of an unfamiliar voice.

  “I know it hurts, but you must let me clean it before the flesh begins to rot.”

  By the time Gráinne’s head jerked in the direction of the voice and her gaze landed on its face, the creature standing next to her bed had wrapped its silky fingers around her wrist and gently lifted her arm back into its formerly outstretched position. Gráinne froze.

  The creature appeared unfinished. Its skin, face, torso, limbs, and hair resembled those of a human, but peeking out of its hair were furry, cat-like ears, one tuned toward her and the other toward the stairwell on the other side of the bed. The ears moved slowly and independently as if catching sounds simultaneously from multiple directions. Gráinne couldn’t remember seeing any animal like it, neither in the flesh nor in paintings or scrolls. What kind of beast is that?

  Gráinne’s surprise turned to panic as the word popped into her head. Mercenary! Without moving or taking her eyes off it, she tried to focus on her surroundings, rather than on the pains emanating from her right elbow and ankle, as well as from her forehead. In a fraction of a second, she did what trapped animals do: she considered her options for fleeing. Although the floor was uncluttered with furniture between the bed and the heavy wooden door leading to the second-floor corridor of the Seetan castle in Vandovir, the door was closed. Gráinne couldn’t see if the iron bolt was in place without looking at it, and she couldn’t let her eyes wander in that direction. That would tip off the creature. Even worse, it was standing on the side of the bed where she’d need to be if she chose the door as her escape. She’d have to shove it out of the way before she ran, and she wasn’t certain she had the strength to do so.

  The other option for an escape route was the back staircase, practically hidden from view by the bed. If she slid off the bed on the side without the creature next to it, she could take the back stairs leading to the ground floor, even though the course required she pass through the reception room, where Slyxx spent most of his waking hours when he wasn’t in his study. Her husband’s size and strength far exceeded hers, but not his speed or agility. She stood a wisp of a chance of eluding him.

  Outmaneuvering the thing holding her wrist was less assured. Gráinne kne
w nothing about its strengths or weaknesses. Making a move to escape without knowing something about the way the creature would react would be utter stupidity. She could end up dead. It would best serve her to study its movements and seize the first opportunity to roll out of bed and run.

  “Get away from me” she said, inching toward the staircase side of the bed as she pulled her wrist out of the creature’s fingers.

  The creature didn’t try to hold her wrist again. In fact, it didn’t seem to react at all. Instead, it dipped a cloth into a bowl of water resting precariously on the edge of the bed and stretched farther over to squeeze the water onto Gráinne’s arm without touching her.

  Cool drops plopped onto her elbow, and she winced, her thoughts of escape interrupted long enough to look down and see a gash.

  The creature stopped squeezing the cloth and cocked its head to the side in apparent curiosity. Its full lips parted to utter in a voice indistinguishable as either male or female, “Why do you call me a beast?”

  Gráinne blinked. Did I say that aloud?

  “I am not a beast.”

  The eyes of the creature softened as it looked from Gráinne’s stunned face back to her arm. It dabbed tenderly at the gash. “I am . . . .” Its voice trailed into a brief silence, and its brow wrinkled into a frown. “I am here to attend to your wounds because Master asked me to do so.” It hesitated again and dipped the cloth into the bowl once more, squeezing out the water with one hand as it examined her injury. It went on, nonchalantly dabbing at Gráinne’s wound though its voice became less comforting and more firm, nearing indignation. “I am not here to kill you, nor am I responsible for your injuries or anyone’s for that matter. You fell against the stone railing and could have tumbled to your death had not Master caught you.”

  Still unsure of the degree of danger the creature posed, Gráinne strained to think past uncertainty and fear to analyze the words it had just spoken. Details. Precision. Perceptive. Defensive. Though she hadn’t meant it to, the thought slid into her mind like snowpack skidding into avalanche. The creature said “Master.” It has a Master.