“Wait!” she cried. “What if I do want to come with you?”
Albern stopped and looked back at her, squinting in the moonslight. “You seemed quite angry, and so I gave the cause up for lost.”
“I am quite angry.”
He shrugged. “Well, then. You can find your way back to town, can you not? You know where the road is—just there. I do not think you will meet any more dangers in the forest tonight, but I could give you my sword, if you wish. Morled should still be there, if you hurry, and I do not doubt that she would be glad to see you.”
Sun looked off through the trees. There, far in the distance, she could just make out the lights of the town: a soft, fiery glow over the top of a hill, that poured through the trees in little shafts.
It had been a long time. Half the night. Her retainers would be nearly frantic, and Mother and Father would have been alerted that she was missing by this point.
But she could still go to them. She could go on through the rest of their tour of Dorsea, and then return home to Dulmun. She could carry on with only the memory of this one little adventure.
She looked at Albern instead.
“I want to come with you.”
With one hand on his saddle, Albern regarded her. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Sun lifted her chin. “Is my company unwelcome?”
“You will have a hard time turning back if you go on with me tonight,” said Albern. “So I would like you to be very sure of your choice before you make it.”
“I do not hate my family,” she said. “Yet for a long time, I have not been able to say that I love them, either, and I think their feelings are the same towards me. In my kingdom, parents adopt children often, and those children are treated just the same as if the parents had bedded to make them. You need not share your family’s blood to love them—yet neither must you love them simply because you share blood. I am not desperate to escape them, and I would not die if I remained. Yet I need a better purpose in my life than that. I need something more to pull me through each day than the thought that things could be worse.”
She took another step towards Albern, and now they were eye-to-eye. “You are a trickster. I do not like that. I do not like being led along a path I cannot see beneath my feet. But tonight, you and I did a good thing. I want to come with you, if you can promise that we will do more good in the nine kingdoms. I want to come with you, if you promise not to trick me into doing the right thing, but trust me to make the right decision.”
Albern gave her a long, careful look before answering. “I can promise both those things,” he said quietly. “One last time. Are you sure?”
“I am sure,” said Sun, and she realized it was true. She did not want to go home. The whole time she had been in this strange, foreign kingdom, she had been looking for some escape—some way to leave, and never have to return. Now that she had found such a chance, she would not turn her back on it.
“I am sure,” she said again. “The beginning of the story has been good. I want to hear the rest of it.”
Albern smiled his widest grin yet. “And I would be happy to tell it to you. Come on, then. Let us get moving. The road is long, and it always grows darker before revealing at last the sun.”
“As you say,” said Sun. “But as we go, please, carry on.”
Slowly, Albern nodded. “Until the tale’s true end.”
KEEP READING
You have begun the Tales of the Wanderer. But as Albern and Mag ride from Lan Shui towards Calentin, many questions remain.
Why does Kaita hate Mag? What does she have planned for the Wanderer in Albern’s homeland of Calentin? And what else do the Shades have planned for the nine kingdoms of Underrealm?
Find out in Stone Heart, the next book in the Tales of the Wanderer. Get it here:
Underrealm.net/TOW2
THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS
A number of you contribute to my Patreon. Your unswerving support means the world to me, and many times it’s kept me going when I would otherwise have had to quit. Each and every one of you has my sincere gratitude.
STUDIO EXECUTIVES
Kelsey Nolen, Kris Nieder, Lars Leonhard, Old Man Smithers, Riley S. Keene, Sybil R. Case
PRODUCERS
A Howard, Michael O'Neal, William Dyer
ABOVE THE LINE
Amy Teegan, Dakota Heath, Dylan Chappell, Eric Ugland, Felipe Avila, Felix, Gerald Hornsby, Gin Hollan, Hank Green, Jay Stonesmith, Jesse Smith, Kakirtog, the Charr in gold, LupineKing, Matty Franklyn, Maureen Army, Maverwyn, Ophir Ronen, Predawn, Renae Brown, Ryan Starbloak, Samantha Jimenez, Sarah, Shannon Tusler, Tariq, thatninja, TheFakeBil, Tommy Donbavand, zord
PATRONS
Aidan McCormack, Brenna Gawain, Chad Kukahiko, Colby R. Rice, Damon, Diane Campbell, Doctor Woo, Donovan Scherer, Draconicrose, Graham Brown, Karl J. Leis, Kj Caston, Kristen Ho, Kyle Hamman, Lady Bee Games, Luke Kondor, Matthew Bowes, Mr. C, Nicholas Rem, Noelle Nichols, Rosie Reast, Sara Langworthy, Simon Cantan, Troy Dukart
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In these Author’s Notes, I like to tell you something special about the book you’ve just read, or what was going through my head while I was writing it.
Instead, today I just want to tell you that this book was a pain in my ass.
I didn’t finish it. I defeated it.
I also think it might be the best Underrealm book I’ve written so far.
If you enjoyed it—and I hope you did—please know that it came at the expense of a lot of energy and frustration.
But having kicked its teeth in, I’m much better prepared for the next one.
That’s all I have to say. Until next time, dearest denizen of Underrealm.
Garrett Robinson,
July 2018
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FACEBOOK
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THE BOOKS OF UNDERREALM
To see all novels in the world of Underrealm, visit:
Underrealm.net/books
THE NIGHTBLADE EPIC
NIGHTBLADE
MYSTIC
DARKFIRE
SHADEBORN
WEREMAGE
YERRIN
THE ACADEMY JOURNALS
THE ALCHEMIST’S TOUCH
THE MINDMAGE’S WRATH
THE FIREMAGE’S VENGEANCE
TALES OF THE WANDERER
BLOOD LUST
STONE HEART
HELL SKIN
CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
NIGHTBLADE
MYSTIC
DARKFIRE
SHADEBORN
BLOOD LUST
THE ALCHEMIST’S TOUCH
THE MINDMAGE’S WRATH
WEREMAGE
STONE HEART
THE FIREMAGE’S VENGEANCE
HELL SKIN
YERRIN
THE CHRONICLES OF UNDERREALM—SHORT STORIES YOU WON’T FIND ANYWHERE ELSE
TAVERN CROSSINGS
THE NIGHT OF TWO KINGS
A NIGHT ON THE SEAT
THE MAN AND THE SATYR
THE BEAST WITHIN
CHASING MOONSLIGHT
BLOOD ON THE SNOW
THE HAMMER OF THE KING
THE TIDES OF WAR
THE LEGEND OF CABRUS
THE SUNMANE PASS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Garrett Robinson was born and raised in Los Angeles. The son of an author/painter father and a violinist/singer mother, no one was surprised when he grew up to be an artist.
After blooding himself in the independent film industry, he self-published his first book in 2012 and swiftly followed it with a stream of others, publishing more than two million words by 2014. Within months he topped numerous Amazon bestseller lists. In 2016, after continuing success, he and his wife created Legacy Books as a publishing house to highlight diverse voices in fantasy.
Now, whenever they’re not with their kids, they spend their time writing and publishing books.
Garrett’s most popular works are the novels of Underrealm, including The Nightblade Epic, The Academy Journals, and the Tales of the Wanderer.
Garrett lives in Oregon with his wife Meghan, his children Dawn, Luke, and Desmond, and his dog Chewbacca.
Garrett can be found on:
DISCORD: underrealm.net/discord
TWITTER: twitter.com/garrettauthor
EMAIL: [email protected]
BLOG: garrettbrobinson.com/blog
YOU DID NOT THINK I forgot about Kaita, did you?
She was there, in Lan Shui, observing the three of us as we rode forth on horseback, Oku trotting beside us.
Kaita still mourned the deaths of Dellek and the other Shades. And for the sake of petty revenge, she wished the vampires had claimed more lives before Mag and I had destroyed them. But she had realized that we would never ride north for Calentin until the threat to Lan Shui had been ended, and so she had let it happen without interfering. And now, things were mostly going according to her plan again.
All except the old man. “Dryleaf,” he called himself. Kaita had not predicted him, and she feared there might be more to him than there appeared. So she had taken the form of a few of the folk of Lan Shui, and she had gone poking about, trying to see if the old man had some hidden agenda that had caused him to take up with us.
She had discovered nothing. It seemed he had joined up with us by sheer luck (if you believe in luck). Ever since he had arrived in Lan Shui, he had taken no interest whatsoever in the great events of Underrealm. He was a fixture of the town, an elder who gave advice when he could and sang songs when he could not.
Indeed, the only thing Kaita had managed to learn was that he had not always been known as Dryleaf. Long ago, when he first came to Lan Shui, he had gone by another name, though the old one sounded just as nonsensical to Kaita.
After all, who ever heard of an old peddler named Bracken?
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