by Bill Hiatt
And if that night I slept with a night light for the first time since I was about six, who could blame me?
Chapter 10: Postlude (Umbra)
I knew I was chained, but I didn’t care. Chained was better than dead…maybe. Never having been dead, I wasn’t sure.
The chain prevented me from using magic, and I felt naked without the shadows. Extra light sources had been brought in, wiping away any trace of shadow anywhere close to me. Well, almost any. She who devised this imprisonment may not have thought about the fact that my body threw a shadow, but it didn’t matter. I kept looking into it but saw nothing. Perhaps the chain kept the Praeceptor or anyone else from knowing where I was. Without having a feeling about which shadow to look through, no one would ever find me.
Did I want anyone to find me? They would probably kill me if they took me back, but perhaps not. I might be forgiven if I found a way to complete my mission.
Whether or not I wanted to be forgiven was the biggest question.
In some ways, I was more like the beings who had captured me than I was like the Populus Umbrae. Was I truly human myself? Would I like to live as a human?
Would I even be permitted to live as a human, or would I always live in this cell, with lights so bright I kept imagining my skin burning away?
Even if I was permitted to leave this prison, could I learn how to be human?
Killing was all I knew. Was it all I could ever know?
The Adventure Isn’t Over!
If you liked this novel, you might also like the other volumes in the Spell Weaver series, also available from Amazon.
“Echoes from My Past Lives” is a short prequel that tells the story of Tal’s original transformation. Find out how his past lives first became a part of his present one…and how that process nearly cost him his life.
Living with Your Past Selves, the first book in the series, picks up Tal’s life four years after “Echoes from My Past Lives” ends and a short time before Divided among Yourselves begins. Having managed to survive the avalanche of past life memories, Tal pulls himself together and makes good use of the lessons learned and skills developed in those previous lives. He still has the ability to work magic, and there is no denying that’s cool. No, his life isn't perfect, but he is managing.
However, his best friend, Stan, has begun to suspect his secret, and Stan isn't the only one. Suddenly, Tal is under attack from a mysterious enemy and under the protection of an equally mysterious friend whose agenda Tal can't quite figure out. An apparition predicts his death. A shape shifter disguised as Stan attacks him. An old adversary starts acting like a friend. He and some other students get hurled into Annwn (the Otherworld), face Morgan le Fay, and only just barely get back alive--and that’s just during the first month of school!
By now Tal knows he is not the only one who can work magic and certainly not the only one who can remember the past. He realizes there is something that he is not remembering, something that could save his life or end it, some reason for the attacks on him that, as they escalate, threaten not only him but everyone he loves as well. In an effort to save them, he will have to risk not only his life, but even his soul.
Divided against Yourselves, the second novel in the series, picks up Tal’s story within days of the end of Living with Your Past Selves. Tal thought that he had saved himself and his friends when he defeated the witch Ceridwen. He was wrong.
He always thought of evil as embodied in external threats that he could overcome in combat. Soon he will discover that the worst evil has been inside of him all along....
Tal’s girlfriend is in a coma for which he holds himself responsible. A close friend, suffering from a past-life memory trauma similar to Tal's, is getting worse, not better. Morgan le Fay is still lurking around and has an agenda Tal can’t figure out. Supernatural interruptions in his life are becoming more frequent, not less so, despite his expectations. In fact, Tal learns that something about his unique nature amplifies otherworldly forces in ways he never imagined were possible, ways that place at risk everyone close to him.
Tal and his allies must face everything from dead armies to dragons. As soon as they overcome one menace, another one is waiting for them. More people are depending on Tal than ever; he carries burdens few adults could face, let alone a sixteen-year-old like himself. Yet somehow Tal at first manages to handle everything the universe throws at him.
What Tal can’t handle is the discovery that a best friend, almost a brother, betrayed him, damaging Tal’s life beyond repair. For the first time, Tal feels a darkness within him, a darkness which he can only barely control...assuming he wants to. He’s no longer sure. Maybe there is something to be said for revenge, and even more to be said for taking what he wants. After all, he has the power...
Hidden among Yourselves, the third novel in the series, picks up shortly after the ending of Divided among Yourselves. Tal faces more challenging mysteries than he has ever dealt with before. Unfortunately, solving them means the difference between life and death—and not just for Tal.
He must find out why the spirit of murder is stalking the people of Santa Brígida. He must find out why a war god wants him dead. To keep a powerful enemy from going free, he must find and retrieve an ancient artifact from a realm he did not believe existed, a realm which he cannot enter, and which none of the inhabitants can leave. Along the way he must also try to figure out if one of his friends is really Alexander the Great reincarnated, how someone could be spontaneously resurrected, and whether a madman is really as mad as he seems.
As if these mysteries were not enough, Tal must also confront opponents stronger than ever, armies of them…and this time they aren’t going to take prisoners. Not only that, but another one of Tal’s friends will betray him, and in a way that will make the earlier betrayal seem like an act of kindness.
“Destiny or Madness” is a paraquel to Hidden among Yourselves that looks at the events in Chapter 2 of that work from Alex’s point of view.
Alex is on the verge of getting what he always wanted: a chance to escape from his dull life and enter the world of Greek mythology. Unfortunately, he also discovers the truth of the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it!”
Tasked by Ares, the god of war, with killing one of his fellow students, Alex questions his own sanity. That’s just the beginning of Alex’s problems, though. Now trapped in a struggle between supernatural forces he can’t begin to understand and forced to use a weapon that is really using him, Alex’s only escape may be to find the love that has eluded him his whole life.
Evil within Yourselves, the fourth book in the series, begins shortly after the ending of Hidden among Yourselves. Taliesin Weaver has survived attack by vindictive witches, ferocious dragons, scheming faerie kings, and even angry ex-gods. Unfortunately, his enemies have not given up, and now they are scheming to destroy the foundation on which his success has been built: his friends.
One by one the people closest to Tal fall for tricks that lure them out of town, leaving them—and him—more vulnerable to attack. Even worse, some of them unwittingly succumb to temptations that tie them to Tal’s worst enemies and set them up to fail Tal when he needs them most.
Tal can no longer rely on his friends. Worse, he can’t even rely on himself. Unaware that the girl he thinks he loves has cast a spell on him, Tal finds himself having more and more trouble containing Dark Me, the evil alter ego that now wrestles him daily for control of his body. That situation is bad enough to begin with, but when a misguided faerie spell gives Dark Me a body and makes him indistinguishable from Tal by any means, scientific or magical, all Hell breaks loose—literally!
Other short Spell Weaver works, including the short story, “Angel Feather” will be released in the next few months, so be sure to watch for them.
If you like to read in other genres, you might enjoy my essay, “Sea of Dreams,” available in the anthology, Where Dreams and Visions Live. If you are a parent w
ith a high school age son or daughter and have not always had success interacting with teachers, you might be interested in the booklet, “A Parent’s Guide to Parent-Teacher Communication.”
About the Author
As soon as he learned to read, Bill Hiatt loved reading. Just as kids who are passionate sports fans often want to be athletes, kids who are passionate readers often want to be writers, and so it was with Bill. Though he dreamed of many career paths over the years, two remained while others came and went: teaching and writing. Fortunately for the world, there was no such thing as self-publishing when Bill was in college and writing horrendous love poetry. Luckily, he kept trying other genres, and he kept reading. He also graduated from UCLA with a degree in English and went on to pursue one of his two dreams by teaching English, mostly at the high school level, for thirty-six years.
Teaching was far more than a day job for Bill; it was his life. He had thought originally that he might be able to both teach and write, but the demands of teaching caused him to forget about writing…for a while. Then, one day Bill, trying to write an interesting grammar test, created one in narrative form, a short story about the students in that particular class. He got so wrapped up in it that he stayed up almost all night writing it. The students loved the test, demanded more like it, and scored better in grammar than any group Bill had ever taught. That experience made Bill realized that he hadn’t really abandoned being a writer; he had merely postponed it. He found time to publish a little at the end of his teaching career. Now that he is retired, all the stories accumulated somewhere in the back of his mind will finally be able to get out.
If you would like more information about Bill, this novel, and/or his other writing projects, you can visit him at http://billhiatt.com/ , at his author page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Bill-Hiatt/431724706902040/), and on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/BillHiatt2). In the first two locations, you can sign up for his mailing list, so that you can be the first to hear about giveaways, new releases, and other cool stuff.