Divided against Yourselves (Spell Weaver)

by Hiatt, Bill

  I was damned if I was ever going to use dark magic again. And I was damned if my friends and family were going to keep on suffering because of who I was.

  WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE

  In the first book, Living with Your Past Selves, Taliesin Weaver (who goes by Tal) is just recovering from the sudden rending of the barriers between this life and all of his previous ones, a crisis that nearly destroyed his mind. By age sixteen, he has learned how to handle the flood of memories and even to take advantage of them. For instance, he can speak languages he never learned—at least not in this life. He has also become an expert musician and swordsman, and he can even work magic. He owes many of these traits to the earliest life he can remember clearly: the life of the original Taliesin, chief bard at the court of King Arthur. He also uses the knowledge from this early life to find the sword White Hilt, which, centuries ago, he helped Arthur steal from Annwn, the Celtic Otherworld. Despite his earlier fear, he has come to accept his new abilities and even to be secretly pleased with them—secretly, because he has an overpowering fear about what would happen if anyone should discover the truth about him.

  Just when his life seems to be going OK, his best friend, Stanford (Stan) Schoenbaum, figures out Tal’s secret. Tal does what he can to confuse the issue, but that very night the Gwrach y Rhibyn (the Welsh banshee) appears outside his house and predicts his death. Much more ominously, the very next day Tal discovers that a pwca (shape-shifter) has taken Stan’s place and managed to steal White Hilt from Tal. Tal defeats the pwca with considerable difficulty, but the shock of having to kill “someone”—which he has not yet had to do in this life—nearly incapacitates him.

  He is rescued from being discovered in a situation he cannot explain by Dan Stevens, a former friend recently turned enemy. Dan’s bizarre and sudden change of heart is explained when an anonymous voice speaks through Dan and explains that the voice is Tal’s ally and will help him, as will the sometimes-possessed Dan. However, the voice refuses to identify itself, and Tal is left to ponder what to do next. He ends up going to Stan’s house and telling him everything. Though skeptical of the magic, Stan is eventually won over, and now Tal has at least one more ally.

  Together Tal and Stan explore what Tal can do, and Tal practices abilities, like shape shifting, that he has not yet tried in his current life. He and Stan also work out physically—Tal because he realizes he needs more stamina, and Stan because he realizes that girls like muscular guys better. Meanwhile, Dan becomes friendly again, even when not possessed, and Tal and Stan start working out with the football team (of which Dan is the captain) in exchange for tutoring. Their social statuses soar, and Tal again begins to think his life might work out. Unfortunately, he is wrong again.

  During the Founders’ Day celebration in Santa Brígida, their home town, Tal, Stan, Dan, and several other students who are being honored for various achievements, are torn out of their reality and thrust into Annwn. There they encounter Morgan Le Fay, who insists she did not bring them but nevertheless intends to hold them prisoner for her own purposes. Only the timely intervention of the Voice saves Tal and his fellow students and returns them to reality. At that point Carrie Winn, the most powerful citizen in Santa Brígida, reveals that she is the Voice, now communicating directly because the situation is more dangerous than she thought, and so she and Tal must work together more closely.

  Life is just getting back to a rocky kind of normality when Dan gets into a big fight with Eva, his current girlfriend and Tal’s ex, ironically over what happened on Founder’s Day, which Dan can’t remember because of his interaction with the Voice. Eva is so angry with Dan that she pretends to seduce Stan and makes sure Dan finds out. Dan tries to beat up Stan, Tal tries to intervene, and his newly healed friendship with Dan is shattered. Eva and Dan are behaving so uncharacteristically that Tal suspects magic.

  To complicate the situation further, Nurse Florence, the school nurse, who also suspects magic in the situation, reveals to Tal that she is the Voice. Tal is now faced with the problem of figuring out whether Carrie Winn or Nurse Florence is really the Voice, a puzzle charged with deadly urgency by the fact that whichever one of them is not the Voice must be the enemy who is clearly out to get Tal.

  As if circumstances were not already difficult enough, Tal, who is annoyed with Stan’s role in the explosion with Dan, is at best noncommittal when Stan turns to Tal for comfort. Later that evening, Tal learns that Stan has run away. With help from both Carrie Winn and Nurse Florence, as well as a reluctant Dan and a contrite Eva, Tal rescues Stan, who is about to be attacked by a kelpie (another kind of shape-shifter) when Tal’s search party finally finds him.

  Eva tries to tell the truth about what happened between her and Stan, but Dan refuses to listen. Tal finally agrees to a footballer ritual, in which he has to box with Shahriyar, the best boxer in the school, in order to get Stan forgiven. Tal gets badly beaten on purpose but is able to manipulate the situation to redeem Stan without destroying Dan’s position on campus, though Dan is still not reconciled to the situation.

  At the pre-homecoming party at Carrie Winn’s mansion, Tal becomes convinced that she is the enemy—the worst one imaginable, given her vast fortune, large security force, and position of complete dominance in the community. Tal tells Nurse Florence about Carrie Winn, and Nurse Florence works on ways to strengthen their magical position, while Tal works on the problem of getting his magic to work on modern technology, so that at the inevitable showdown, he can neutralize Winn’s security system and the guns of her security men.

  To get his magic to interact with technology, Tal needs to visualize scientific concepts the way Stan can. To do that, he needs to be able to read Stan’s mind, but modern telepathy is not part of his inherited magic, so he needs to train himself to use magic differently—in just a couple of weeks, when his band is scheduled to perform at Carrie Winn’s Halloween party. He is positive that is when she will make whatever move she has been planning.

  At the homecoming dance, where his band is also playing, Tal begins to develop telepathic abilities, and he also engineers a reconciliation between Dan and Eva—a bitter victory, because secretly he wants her for himself, but he knows he can never have her honorably, and he needs to heal the breach with Dan, which he finally manages to do.

  Prior to Halloween, Tal also masters techniques to get his magic to work on technology, and Nurse Florence recruits other student allies. With the help of Gywnn ap Nudd, the king of the Welsh faeries, she also obtains more magic swords from Govannon, the faerie smith. Gywnn agrees to Nurse Florence’s request in part because Tal and his friends prove their worth to him and partly because he fears the power Carrie Winn is gaining, power that may eventually threaten the security of Annwn itself. (Nurse Florence is in a position to broker this kind of deal because she is a lady of the lake.) Dan and Stan both end up with unique swords, as do new allies Shahriyar, Gordy, and Carlos.

  When Halloween arrives, Tal and Nurse Florence discover that their plans are based on completely wrong assumptions. They had believed that Carrie Winn would have to attack stealthily to avoid creating a scene in front of all her guests and staff. Instead, they discover the guests are an illusion: the regular staff has the night off, and Winn’s security men are all shifters. Tal and his allies fight the shifters and win the battle, but they can still lose the war, and they discover that the civilians (other students like Eva and Tal’s band members) are trapped in the house, leaving Tal no way to retreat—the only possible way to save everyone is to beat Carrie Winn.

  Exhausted, he and his allies head to the roof, where Winn is hiding. They think she will be as exhausted as they are. Wrong again, they discover she has the aid of Morgan Le Fay, who was supplying much of the magic early on, leaving Carrie Winn fresh to continue the fight. Even worse, Carrie Winn reveals herself as Ceridwen, a witch with an ancient grudge against Taliesin. Ceridwen has researched magic for hundreds of years and is the one who caused Tal to remember his past lives
in the first place. Nothing but his grisly death and the imprisonment of his soul in her cauldron will satisfy her. In the final battle, Tal and his friends prevail, but at a cost. Stan comes face to face with his own previous lives. Carla Rinaldi, the first girl since Eva for whom Tal has feelings, take a double dose of the past-lives spell and ends up comatose. Vanora, a Welsh colleague of Nurse Florence’s, takes Carrie Winn’s place after Winn’s defeat and death, but Tal doesn’t want to deal with Vanora because he blames her for Carla’s condition—though not quite as much as he blames himself.

  Tal helps Stan through his past-life memory crisis, but he can do nothing for Carla, though he visits her in the hospital every day. He pretends for his family and friends that he is coping. At the end of the book, Tal is superficially more popular and successful than ever, but inwardly he is miserable.

  At least he no longer has an enemy to worry about. Or so he thinks…

  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. Follow the links below to check them out.

  Echoes from My Past Lives, a short prequel that tells the story of Tal’s original transformation.

  http://viewbook.at/B00BZIROVE

  Living with Your Past Selves, the novel that started that Spell Weaver phenomenon, tells the story of Tal’s struggles against Ceridwen during the days immediately preceding the action in Divided against Yourselves. Living with Your Past Selves has received the following awards and recognitions to date:

  Literary Classics International Book Awards, 2013: Gold Medal, Best First Novel

  Literary Classics International Book Awards, 2013: Silver Medal, Best Young Adult Fantasy

  Pinnacle Book Awards, Summer, 2013: Best Book, Young Adult

  Best Indie Book Awards, 2013: Semifinalist, Fantasy

  Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Awards, 2012: Finalist, Fantasy

  Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards, 2012: Quarterfinalist, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror

  Readers’ Favorite: Five Star Book

  Indie Reader: Approved Book

  http://viewbook.at/B00987M4CI

  Of course, there will also be other books in this series, so visit the author from time to time for the latest information on new projects. See About the Author for contact information.

  If you bought this book relatively early in its life cycle (before January 1, 2014), maybe the release party is still going on (or hasn’t even started yet—I can’t really set the date and start inviting people until the book actually goes live). Check out https://www.facebook.com/events/1423325781220258/ for some fun and a chance to win prizes.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Bill Hiatt has been teaching English at Beverly Hills High School since 1981. Although teaching has been and remains his first love, he has also been drawn to creative writing of various sorts. From high school on, he wrote short stories, a little poetry, and an earlier novel, finished in 1982. In September, 2012 Living with Your Past Selves became his first published work. In March, 2013 Echoes from My Past Lives, the prequel to LWYPS, was published, and you are now reading Divided against Yourselves, his third published work…but certainly not his last!

  Bill’s ancestors came from a wide variety of European backgrounds, with Celtic groups (Irish, Scottish, Breton, and, as you might guess from this novel, Welsh) being the most well represented. His ancestors settled in America long ago, though, some of them as early as the colonial period. He is a third generation Californian who grew up and still currently lives in Culver City, California.

  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 ).