I toss the Three up into the air, and it lands in the grass as a small, slim man in grey rags like mine. He stares at me with a blank face. I chuckle knowingly, just for effect.
“Go.”
He bows and runs towards the center of the field with quick, easy strides, while I drop into a crouch and follow slowly, hidden by the tall green. I’m fast for fourteen, they say. They’re right.
Three is halfway across the field when the ground behind him suddenly explodes, blowing dirt and weeds high into the air. I hiccup trying to stop a laugh. Out from the ground emerges an abnormally tall and thin man with painted red skin, who reaches out with a scrawny, elongated arm and snags Three like a runaway kitten. It's a Jack. I tighten my jaw and hurtle through the tall grass even faster. Only one competitor uses Red Jacks.
It's too late to save Three. The Jack snaps his neck before I can even get close, then he looks around with slanted, feline eyes, looking for more prey. Three turns back into a playing card, torn and bloody, and floats softly to the ground.
The Jack sees me, and with a catlike screech he leaps in my direction on all fours. Time to act. I use my scuttling, forward motion to propel myself into a flying leap that meets the Jack in mid-air. His flailing arms wrap around me as we hit the ground with a thud, trying to crush the life out of me. But my arms are flung high, and as we roll in the grass I grab his abnormally long neck and dig my painted black fingernails in. My lungs begin to deflate like dead balloons just as I pinch the Jack's papery spinepiece, and suddenly I am wrestling with a red Jack of diamonds. Just a card. A pawn. A tool.
Most people think that since playing cards are manufactured, they don't feel emotion. The cards don't feel pain, they say.
They're wrong. Dead, dead wrong.
“Well, you certainly have lived up to expectations,” says a voice behind me, “Though, for someone of your skills, I had expected you to be more... well, more.” The voice is slimy and menacing, just like its owner, a short, flabby man, painted red like his Jack. He is dressed elaborately. He revels in glamorous excess. He is the Lord of Diamonds.
I have picked myself up, and I turn around, brushing the dirt off my rags.
“Well,” I say, “Looks aren't everything.” I stomp on the dead card, and the Lord strokes a diamond-studded card box of his own.
“Oh,” he snickers, “But they are indeed!” He picks out three cards of his own, deliberately slow. I begin to step back, and as I do he suddenly hurls them at me. They are flimsy paper no longer; their edges are sharpened metal and they glow with burning heat. They are the cards of a long-time champion. Cards made to win, not like my own cheap deck.
I sway and twist backward, but I do not move. The cards whip past me, so close they sear my face. Behind me they expand, and before they hit the ground they have become the weapons they were built to be: a King, a Queen, and an Ace. The Lord of Diamonds is taking no chances.
“Beat this, kid,” he snarls, and I know I can't. Not without cards of my own.
PREVIEW OF
-THE EXCATHER CYCLE-
BOOK ONE
-MORDRED-
Night lay over all of Ancient Britton. It darkened the forests of Rience in the South and swept haughtily over the mountains of Darkumbra in the North. It lay heavily over the forgotten realms of Albion and Cornwall, but over the western empire of Caledonia it floated like a dream. Great forests rustled mysteriously in the midnight wind, mingling sounds of beast and tree and fountain. Immense plains and fields of shadowed amber and muted green swayed in this same breath of air, and mountains rumbled and spoke with hidden thunder. As the wind blew across the realms of living men, the halls of wood and stone sent up to heaven a melody of their own, a silence built by years of toil and valorous deeds. Camelot, the mightiest city of that age, slept in a mantle of moonlight, a monumental guardian of the land.
“Arthur.” A voice whispered through the night like a breath of wind. No answer.
“Arthur.” It breathed through the forests, across the fields, under the mountains, and right to Camelot's doors. No answer.
“Arthur.” A barely perceptible shiver ran through the walls and towers, keeps and steeples of the great city. No answer.
“Arthur.” The King of Caledonia woke with a start, the voice calling his name through the halls of time.
“Arthur.” He sat up slowly, feeling for Gwen and knowing she was beside him, asleep. Quietly, he slipped out of bed and dressed, all the while that whispering windy call driving him to wakefulness.
“Arthur.” Slipping in and out of the nightly shadows, he made his way to the topmost tower of the palace: Merlin's observatory. Slowly and sleepily he made his way past all of the wizard's jumbled artifacts and books. There was a door in the opposite wall that would lead him to a balcony that looked out over the whole sleeping city.
“Arthur.” Not sure what to expect, he opened the door and stepped out into the cool night air. He was searching for someone, anyone, but there was no one there. Who was calling?
“Arthur.” The king whirled and faced the wizard who had suddenly appeared. There was silence for a long time. Then-
“Danger, my King. Your rule is failing, your knights are in disarray.” Arthur tensed as the specter of his old friend spoke. “Merlin,” the king whispered, “can it truly be you?”
“Danger. Your rule is at an end. Beware of Mordred.” Merlin's face suddenly shifted, wavered, and blew away in the wind, his body following.
“Beware.” The wind whipped and roared around the king like a living thing.
Mordred is coming. Arthur cursed and grasped at the ghostly apparition, but the wizard was gone. In his place was a tall youth with long black hair. His white face was marred by what may have been a scar or a tattoo. His eyes shone with otherworldly light.
Doom. Expressionless, the stranger blocked Arthur's lunge and gave him a violent shove that sent the king over the edge of the parapet. There was a roaring wind, and Arthur was engulfed in a wet, grey mist that stopped his fall and blocked his vision. Sounds of battle sounded like thunder around him, and the king felt a sharp pain in his side. He put his hand to his body and took it away bloodied. And all around that horrible screaming wind-
-Arthur woke up standing alone in a cold, desolate chamber, long abandoned. The king gritted his teeth. Of course. Merlin had been missing for years. He had somehow walked in his sleep all the way to the wizard's old and long since abandoned rooms. It had all been a dream. He turned to leave the lonely room- and stumbled on something he could not see. Hand outstretched, the king attempted to halt his fall by grasping at the door handle. Slipping to his knees, the Roman monarch cursed the dark and pulled himself back up.
Mordred. The name had been violently burned into the expensive wood of the observatory door. The black marks spread out in spidery lettering like a bleeding wound: Merlin's last prophecy. Underneath the name was a series of scorches and scratches that Arthur had never noticed there before. It was writing, Latin maybe, but in the shadows he couldn't tell what it said.
Lurching out into the darkened hall, the king made for his room once more…
Storm Kings (Song of the Aura, Book Six) Page 20