| Excerpts
Secret Heart
By Jane Carver
“And so my lord, the material simply would not go together well enough
for a good fit, but…” Lady Samma stopped in mid sentence and stood like
a fish on dry ground, her mouth open as Lord Advisor Jaelon spun on his
heels and departed without a word. She had been sharing the trials of
her day with him and apparently thought him as engrossed with material
and fittings as she. The door shut with a definite thud which broke her
frozen pose.
“My Queen, whatever did I say?”
Samma has no idea how boring her conversation is to a man like Jaelon,
Ramier thought. But she could not hurt the lady’s feelings so. However…
* * * *
“I did not listen because the lady says nothing I want to hear.” Jaelon
bowed slightly to his queen. “I did not intend
disrespect, but I could not abide her speech any longer.” He shrugged
his shoulder. “So I left.”
“And left the whining twit with me.” Ramier crinkled her nose,
expressing her displeasure.
“Ah, yes, but being the queen, you may leave without a word, and no one
can say you nay.” This time, Jaelon leaned in to her and smiled. “Admit
it. You couldn’t stand listening to her prattle either.”
Ramier tried to hold her frown, but it gave way to a smile. She tapped
his hand in pique. “While that may be true, my good advisor, please take
me with you the next time you abscond.” She rolled her eyes
dramatically. “That woman will be the death of me yet.” With a tease to
her tone, she amended, “Or at least her tongue will.”
“Well, if one uses her tongue correctly, a man would not leave so
abruptly.”
“Jaelon!” Ramier dropped her chin and widened her eyes, unable to
believe the man said such a thing where anyone could hear.
“Yes, my Queen?” All innocence, Jaelon imitated her wide-eyed expression
and left the impression she misinterpreted his words.
Shaking her head in amusement at an old game of words they’d played
since childhood, she sat straighter and asked, all seriousness now, “I
did do the correct thing, didn’t I? Leaving, I mean?” She rose and
walked to stand in front of the oversized fireplace. “I mean, what if I
hurt Lady Samma’s feelings? I did leave before I thought about that
possibility.”
Jaelon remained seated, knowing that the lady would figure out the
solution to this problem on her own with some gentle guidance. From him.
“What would you do now?”
“I think…” she hung her head, “I think I must apologize for my haste in
leaving. Sometimes I can’t sit still and listen to what I have heard
before. But I would not hurt the lady for the world.”
“I believe you see your own flaw and seek to be kind, my lady,” Jaelon
said thoughtfully.
“Even something so innocent as Lady Samma’s chatter makes me want to
avoid gatherings. Is that not a bad thing, my Lord Advisor?” Now she
sounded pathetic.
“But you are being just and, I might add, courageous, by admitting you
tire of hearing such and long for silence. However, not with the
intention of hurting the sweet lady’s feelings. I applaud your
decision.” He did clap in fact, letting her know he approved her plan.
“This doing first and thinking later is going to get me in trouble some
day, Jaelon.” She turned enthusiastically and
shot him a merry smile.
“Perhaps, but that is why I am here. To advise. We hope I would slip
words of wisdom in those ears long before you do something rash.”
“This time, good sir, you left me to my own devices and see where it
landed me?” She waved one hand slightly at him. “No time is better than
now to say my piece.” She moved toward him, ready to find the offended
lady. But she stopped next to Jaelon’s chair first. “If I have never
said how much I value your sense of leadership and justice, I have been
amiss. I am lost without you.” Like a slender bark sailing down a
merrily bubbling stream, she all but floated out of the tall double
castle doors.
Jaelon sat, unmindful of the servants preparing trestle tables and
benches. Meal time soon. His gaze directed at the fire burning low now,
his mind’s eye replayed the moments he spent quietly with Queen Ramier.
A full-figured tall woman of nineteen seasons, she was the epitome of
womanhood, in his thinking. Lengths of jet-black hair lay secured in a
jeweled caul—net—against the back of her neck. A scarlet cote—gown—lay
over a white chemise. Black ribbon wound back and forth across her
stomach and cinched the gown against her frame. Her eschapins—shoes—matched
the deep red of her cote. Except for ceremonies in which she wore the
crown her father King had prepared for her, she wore a mitre—narrow
circlet of gold—as her emblem of state. Simple but elegant was his
queen. More important than her appearance though was her zest for life,
that smile of hers that spread slowly across her face, the light that
filled her deep green eyes until they resembled the pines beyond the
castle when sunrise tips them with light. She cared for her people. And
him. Although she was not aware of his secret…how much he adored her.
Loved her.
Would that she knew how much I value her. In honest thought, how much
she means to me. Jaelon frowned, his thoughts turning serious. I
can never be more to her than advisor. She must never know my feelings.
------------------
The Invisible
World
By
Damien Kane
“How did he die?” Eresh asked, raising her eyes to the throne. Her skin
trembled with anger, or fright.
“We do not know.” King Davin looked solemn as he rose from his throne.
He was thin and old and his hair was receding like a slow tide, leaving
him with a prominent widow’s peak and a nose too big for his face. “I
need you to hurry, Eresh. You must find and destroy this demon portal
that lies within the sanctum of Castle Wenterlock upon Mount Moonstone.
May the Gods be with you.” He studied her and as their eyes met, he
added, “You are our last hope, Eresh. Many have already died. You are
the only person I have left who can do this. I shall provide you with
five horsemen to aid your journey and I shall pay you fifty thousand
gold pieces and two hundred cows.”
She bowed her head to her Sovereign. Her long tawny hair fell over her
roundish face and threatened to poke into her large, clear green eyes.
“I go alone,” she said.
“You will need help,” he told her.
“Please. I wish to go alone.”
He wrapped his hands around his back and stood on his toes. “If that is
what you wish, then so shall it be. If you find my help of no value,
then I will pray that help will find you.”
“I will not fail you,” she told him.
He said, “I trust you will not, and should you, then we will all
perish.”
Eresh stood up and licked her lips. She wore a light copper breastplate
and back plate, laced with small rectangular mirrors to ward against the
evil eye. A reinforced steel bracer triple forged for strength was
wrapped around her left forearm as a shield, and her leather boots had
grown into her skin because she never took them off. She wore a high but
heavy leather skirt encrusted with rusty steel pins. Around her neck
hung a gold talisman blessed by the Priest of Tor to protect her from
the dream spirits and her sword contained a sapphire in the middle of
the cross guard. She was tall, graceful, and highly skilled with blades
and had a record of experience in war.
She bowed and turned away then left the dark, damp throne room and
walked quickly into the inner ward. The Marshal was waiting for her. He
was a tall emaciated man with oily black hair. Three yellow teeth
protruded from his mouth when he smiled.
“All’s well,” he told her. “He’s been shoed. The Acater supplied some
food for your journey and I’ve laced your bags to the beast.” He grinned
at her and wiped his nose on his left cuff. Eresh could smell his rotten
breath and she had to turn away from him, mounting her ride and paying
specific attention to how the grey bags had been attached.
“He’s not a beast,” she told him and thumped the horse’s flank with the
flat of her hand and smiled. “Good day, Sir Warlock.” Her horse was
black and strong, larger than any other horse in her society. His
muscles were constantly taut from labour and his breast looked like it
had been stuffed with large rocks. He was a proud and trustworthy
animal, and one of few to match her temper. He wore a leather harness
with a gold leaf trim and a heavy leather saddle.
The Marshal was still grinning at her when she looked down. “A
suggestion, m’Lady…”
“Go take a bath,” she said.
“No, I mean –”
“Yah!” She bucked and Sir Warlock shook his head and galloped away,
leaving the Marshal in a cloud of desert dust and a coughing fit.
Eresh passed under the portcullis, crossed the drawbridge and didn’t
look back on the kingdom. A zephyr swam through her hair and the warm
sun stroked her exposed skin. Sir Warlock’s constant thudding of hooves
on the ground was hypnotic and the surrounding land, ambient. She could
smell the earth around her and the grasslands and orchards they ran
through. There was an assortment of wildlife and birds warbled as they
passed through.
After an hour, she noticed something on the path ahead and brought Sir
Warlock to a trot. He snorted at her for losing its rhythm, as angry as
a man interrupted during the throes of lovemaking. They stopped in the
shade of a large oak tree and she dismounted, her curiosity geared
toward a figure suspended low in a tree. His arms were bound by thick
rope from a high bough and his feet came up to where her knees were.
His legs kicked in frustration and he grunted with effort. His skin
looked darker than most men she had met, greasy, sparkling with the
occasional ray of sunshine that fell on his torso. He was also naked.
His body was strong and muscular and his hands were bound together
around his back. Around his head was a full leather hood with a slit at
the mouth for him to breathe and sweat was dripping from him. He smelled
earthy.
“What do we have here?” she asked in jest, directing the
question to Sir Warlock. “I’ve never seen one of these grow on trees
before.”
---------------------
Amethysta
By Ellen
Margret
Chapter 1
She had been imprisoned for so long. How long, she had no idea, for she
had no way of measuring the passing of it. She lacked a physical body
for it had been stripped from her within a very short time of the guilty
verdict being pronounced. The punishment had been served almost
immediately and she was given no opportunity to appeal. So, she had been
taken to the Quaagem Chamber.
The chamber was vast and consisted of walkways which circled around huge
pits in the floor. Each pit was piled high with thousands of identical
crystals but no two pits were the same. They gave her a choice, allowing
her to choose one crystal from one pit. She chose a light purple
crystal, simply because the Relogga, the one responsible for
incarceration of prisoners, had remarked that the colouring matched her
hair.
Then he had laughed grimly. “Not that it matters. Very soon you shall
have no hair. Very soon you shall have no body. All that shall remain
will be your soul essence and that shall be imprisoned within the
crystal for all time.”
She looked at him. “Will I retain my thoughts?”
“Yes,” he laughed. “Those thoughts will be all that is left to you.
After a million years or so, you will grow weary of them. You will wish
for death.”
“Why can I not have the death sentence?”
“That is for lesser offences. Your offence is too heinous. Crystal
incarceration is the ultimate punishment.”
She felt raw fear. “This is unfair.”
He shrugged. “This is your punishment.”
Her fear made her struggle against the two officers holding her.
“Drag her across to the Crystal Denconser,” the Relogga snapped. “Shove
her in and close the door.”
Her heart beat frantically. Her fate was worse than death. The officers
roughly pushed her into the Denconser, a clear crystal box, big enough
to hold her. Once inside she began to beat upon the door. She could see
those outside and they laughed at her. She continued to hit the door
but, above her head, sparks flew from vibrating crystals in the top. She
began to feel dizzy and fell to her knees. Then something hit her on the
head and she knew that the Relogga had fed her chosen crystal in through
the shoot on the side. Everything began to spin and her body grew colder
and colder. She knew what would most likely happen next for it had been
explained to her.
“Your essence will flow into the crystal, and then the crystal will be
sent spiralling through a narrow, space gutter,” they revealed. “You
shall be exiled from the planet, but your final landing destination
shall not be disclosed.”
Why would it not be disclosed? She wondered if even the Relogga
themselves knew.
* * * *
Her crystal came down in a verdant land. It was a land populated by
enormous beasts of which she had never seen the like on her home planet.
She had dark blue lizards on her planet but these, although they looked
like lizards, were green and ten times bigger. They stomped around and
roared and they fought like wild beasts. Some had spikes on their backs
and others had huge teeth. To her great displeasure these beasts
endlessly kicked around her crystal. She lost count of the number of
times she got eaten but, of course, her crystal passed through their
insides and came out the other end in a pile of disgusting shit. She
found it strange that, although she had no eyes, she could still sense
and 'see' what was going on around her.
Fifty-two times she was swallowed by huge bird-like animals that
screeched noisily. They took her into new territory, not that it really
mattered where she was. For a very long time the ocean tides just swept
her around.
Time rolled on by. The huge green beasts seemed to disappear after a
long winter where the sun never shone and dust circled endlessly around.
Then tiny furry creatures seemed to be scurrying everywhere. Many times
she ended up in their nests. They did not stay tiny. They grew and they
changed shape. Some walked on two legs, some took to the oceans, some
began to hop rather than walk. Those that walked on two legs intrigued
her. She witnessed them slowly change from hairy, wild beasts that swung
in the trees, into gentler beings that wore clothes and could converse
intelligently. She listened to them for so long that she even began to
understand their language. She marvelled that they were so like her own
race, and yet her race had existed millions of years before. Or so she
thought. She really had no idea but she had also gleaned that, like in
her own world, some were male and some were female.
So, she finally found herself on a hillside. There had been hills and
valleys in her own world but they had not been green. A male picked her
up and put her in his pocket. She liked the way he had looked at her and
she enjoyed being taken inside and placed on his desk. What she did not
like was being taken to a chamber and assaulted by a number of sharp and
heavy weapons. It reminded her of her incarceration. Of being in the
Denconser.
Her consciousness had been affected immediately after she heard the loud
crack. Her crystal vehicle had been damaged and that could only mean
that her life was now at an end. So, she had death after all. Her
essence seemed to shrink. Her senses receded and then she knew nothing
for the first time in what had felt like an eternity.
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