Apologies….

Been away for a while–caught the flu and am catching up on things I wasn’t able to get to (like my blog!).  Also have been reassessing the structure of When Dragons Wake, and tidying things up a bit.  Probably won’t post revised chapters for a while, if at all, on this blog.  No worries–no plot changes, just making sure the scenes and sequels are well structured and the reactions to the motivations are appropriate to the POV character and make sense.

I’ll add the draft of the latest chapter in the next day or two, although I haven’t gotten around to fine-tuning the structure on it, yet.

Excerpt from When Dragons Wake, Chapter 24

Nikko–open your eyes.

Nikko obeyed.  To her astonishment, she found her arms outstretched, a pulsating ball of light the size of a summer melon floating between them, warm as a peat fire and red as Rennag Cro-derg.

Opposite the translucent orb, Meretrix was smiling at her.  Now, try to lift the stone again.

Nikko carefully swiveled on her stool, keeping the red globe suspended above her now-trembling limbs.  Tendrils of light snaked from it, coiling and uncoiling, reaching for the fist-sized piece of granite at her feet and encircling it.  The rock lurched upwards and hovered above the hearth within the luminous net, bobbing like a twig in a stream.

Behind her, Meretrix caught her breath.  Excellent!

As Nikko swelled with pride, the rock changed shape within its cocoon, elongating downwards, part of it dripping on the flags, less than a hand span from her feet.

Meretrix cried out in alarm. “Nikko!”

Nikko dissipated her energy–a thousand pinpricks that stung every part of her flesh.  She threw herself back, away from the fiery glob as it fell to the hearth with a splat.  Before she could gather her wits, Meretrix was batting out the flames that sprouted from her skirt where the molten rock had spattered it.

After Meretrix extinguished the last of the fire, Nikko sat up, coughing, waving away the haze of smoke surrounding them, her heart pounding.  On the hearth, waves of heat rose from the red blob that had once been a rock.

Nikko turned her head to Meretrix.  That wasn’t supposed to happen.  Was it?

Meretrix sat back on her heels, staring at the glowing lump.  Perhaps we should return to conjuring whitefire, until we can find a more suitable location for you to explore this…fire that is yours.

(Another) Excerpt from When Dragons Wake, Chapter 23

Ceannard leaned against the openwork wall and gazed out at the girl on the other side who huddled on the steps of the bed alcove, head buried in her arms.  “How long has she been like this?” he asked in a low voice.

“Days, now,” standing behind him, Meretrix whispered.  “Ever since she learned you made Beo’lach her champion.”

“Beo’lach?  What has he to do with it?”

“They are both young; he likely captured her heart as well as her, before his manitu claimed him.”

Ceannard’s jaw twitched.  “She loves him.”

Ceannard jealous?  Meretrix was stunned.  “Youthful infatuation, Sire–nothing more I’m sure.  But, she believes she is to blame for what he has become.”

He fell silent for a moment, smoothing his beard the way he did when mulling over a matter.  “What can I do?”  He then cast Meretrix an oblique look.  “Or should I say, what do you suggest I do?”

“I am but a woman, Sire, so my opinion matters little.  But consider having Beo’lach ward her, not by skulking about day and night, lurking in shadows, but by spending time with her–for a while.  Once she realizes the boy she knew is dead, whether or not by her own doing, and sees what he has become, she will be done with him.”

His forehead creasing, Ceannard returned to his watch of Nikko.  “How can you be so sure it will work?”

“It must.  If it doesn’t, she’ll eventually try your patience and you’ll grow weary of her.  I…would not see her fall from your favor.”  Her own truthfulness startled Meretrix.

Ceannard turned his head to look at her, eyebrows lifted in surprise.  “Most women would welcome an opportunity to be rid of a rival.”

“I have a fondness for her, Lord.  And, I am not like most women.”

They locked gazes for a moment, and then Ceannard cleared his throat, looked to Nikko and clasped his hands behind his back.

“I have noticed the girl is becoming…soft.  I believe she would benefit from some sort of physical regimen….”

Excerpt from When Dragons Wake, Chapter 23

Ceannard rose from his chair on the dais as Donal and Asdeach’s swords hissed from their scabbards.  “You dare show yourself here?”

The darkling, the son of the Ard-Hiarn chieftain slain by Asdeach a decade past, cocked his head and returned Ceannard’s glare.  “I dare nothing.  You sent for me.”

Donal turned to Ceannard, sword in hand.  “Sire, give us leave to dispatch this demonspawn now!”

Ceannard raised a hand to silence him.  He had put forth the call for another Uath-amas weeks ago, and none had answered it.  Meru’feral had since slain four Muilteens and one of his own men-at-arms in attempts to get at Nikko.  He clenched his jaw; he could not, would not lose her.  To anyone.  But he had to know he could trust this one.

Ceannard lowered his hand.  “Who are you now, and whom do you serve?”  Although the demon before him had maimed his son and authored the deaths of the bargemen and many more of his people, he was never-the-less Uath-amas.  And Uath-amas, skilled and cunning warriors that they were, were no liars.

“I am Beo’lach of the Dorchadas.  Alt Bensaggert Dro’cree has given me leave to serve you.”

“Even if it means killing one of your own brethren?”

“Meru’feral is renegade to Dro’cree as well.  To her, he is already dead.”

Uneasy, Ceannard settled against the fur robe in his chair.  He leaned against the armrest and rubbed his beard as he studied the former clan chief.  “Why you?  Why did your mistress send you?”

“You sent for a Dorchadas warrior equal to Meru’feral.”

“You’ve seen less than twenty winters; you expect me to believe you are Meru’feral’s equal?”

“No.  Not his equal.  More.”

Excerpt from When Dragons Wake, Chapter 22

Beo’lach stood over his opponent, his boot on the chest of the older man and the point of his sword resting against his throat.

Kill it…feed….

Teeth gritted, sweat soaking the woolen shirt beneath his black hauberk, Beo’lach struggled against the force–his creature’s will–driving his hand down, piercing the flesh of the Uath-amas until blood welled in the depression. The man lay motionless, regarding Beo’lach with black eyes that were already dead. His sword and dagger had skittered across the blood-spattered ice to join the score and more other weapons strewn about the temple.

Why do you hesitate? Kill! Feed!

“No….”

The single word elicited murmurs of anticipation from blue-robed priestesses who watched from the shadows of immense beasts formed from glacier ice–the ancient totems of the Ard-Hiarn. Dro’cree herself leaned forward in her high seat carved into the belly of a towering Caur-bithir Mooar. The ice dragon looked down at them with hollow eyes, wings folded, two cavities in its breast the Rey-clag–the Dragon Heart crystals once occupied.

You dare defy me–deny me?

Beo’lach tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, his father’s sword, and, with every mote of will he could muster, withdrew the blade from the man’s throat.

Then I deny you…

With a gasp, Beo’lach dropped to his knees, his ears deaf to the joyful ululation of the Bensaggerts as every pain, every sorrow ever stolen by his creature, swept over him like the waters of a bursting ice jam.

As unconsciousness blissfully claimed him, Dro’cree raced down the steps to catch him in her arms.

Excerpt from When Dragons Wake, Chapter 21

Meretrix picked up the staff and wondered at the prickle creeping up her arm. The runes carved on the shaft exuded undulating streams of colors when she studied them with her second sight. Farther up, near the twin heads, the colors grew less varied and a dominant one emerged. Tendrils of warm energy interlaced in fluctuating patterns around the twin heads. I saw its power; it helped you to heal Smarach’s cracked skull. It is red, like Rennag Cro-derg.

We thought of that as well. Do you think there’s a connection?

Perhaps. Smarach had slipped a horse into her room without waking her. Only someone with talent equal to hers could have done it. But, she had known Smarach all his life; she would have sensed such talent within him. Unless….

Meretrix laid the staff back on the table. Perhaps the staff imbued him with some form of the Gift.

Yes! That’s exactly what we thought. But what it is? From where does it come? How can we wield it?

Meretrix shook her head. It is beyond my ken.

The disappointment she sensed in Creeney struck her heart like a dagger. The old woman rose from the stool and walked to the firepit. The teacher who had terrified Meretrix as a young novice now looked small and old as she warmed herself.

After a time, Creeney spoke. Nothing like this is in our lore.

Meretrix recalled Creeney’s words from her first lesson. Eager to dispel the disquietude that had pervaded the room like the pungent smoke from the burning rush, she repeated them. Our lore defies transcription, and even if it did not, we dare not transcribe it for fear of reprisal. ‘As the lore is retold, so might it also be changed’.

Changed, altered, yes. But lost so utterly? Creeney lowered her head, shaking it. Have we forgotten so much?

Excerpt from When Dragons Wake, Chapter 20

Creeney gathered herself and climbed onto the top of the tower amid the smell of smoke and the heat of steam rising from snow. Trailing somewhere behind her, Rogennal and Gromag begged her to stop. But their pleas sounded distant, like the icy puddles through which she waded.

As she ascended the stair chiseled into the granite monolith that jutted through the roof, sparks flew from the heel of her staff each time it struck a step, stinging her bare feet and turning the ice on the stone into rivulets of water that ran past her feet. When the stair gave way to the path that spiraled about the outcrop, she began to sing. But it was not words of praise to the Maker or to the Forebears she sang; it was words of power, words forbidden long before the priests forbade magic.

Her song rose above the howl of the bitter wind buffeting her, threatening to blow her from the winding path and send her tumbling to her death below. But with each circuit she completed, the spell grew stronger. By the time she reached the top of the monolith, neither wind nor the silent pleas of the Sisters could penetrate its cocoon.

She stretched forth her hand and sought the altar that stood at the center of the monolith’s apex. Carved from an outcrop of quartz crystal, its features all but worn away by the centuries, the altar had survived countless tremors and Purges. Creeney knelt, knees sinking into depressions in the stone made by Ard-Hiarn priestesses who had knelt before it for millennia. It did not matter she knew nothing of the magic they had woven there; it was enough that they had considered the altar a place of power. And for revenge, she would need much power. It did not matter she knew nothing of the defilers; whoever they were, wherever they were, retribution would find them.

She laid the staff on the altar, but kept her hand curled about the shaft. Although she could not see it, she could feel its power seeping into fissures in the crystal, down the base carved in the shape of a hatchling dragon. Like blood, it flowed through the quartz veins of the granite in all directions and down the monolith itself. The air about her warmed with steam rising from the snow and ice that melted in its wake.

As she uttered the last of the incantation, her voice crackling with energy, something hurtled into her and shoved her to the stone platform, breaking her trance, and the spell. An instant later, women fussed over her while Kiuney and Gromag pulled off her whoever had tackled her.

“Stop!” Creeney pushed away the hands trying to help her and twisted herself around. Rogennal and the other Sisters who had come to her aid fell silent and backed away, their emotions a mixture of surprise and fear.

Creeney grabbed the sleeve of her assailant and touched his face with her other hand. Smarach bit at her hand and tried to jerk free until she grabbed his chin and forced him to be still. “How did you do that? How did you penetrate my spell?”

Eldest, he cannot speak. As Kiuney formed these words in her mind, the boy jerked his head in her direction.

“And I’ll wager he can.” Creeney tightened her grip, making him whimper. “Have you a name, boy?”

He nodded and she felt his eyes flicking from Sister to Sister as they communicated with each other. What is Creeney doing? The boy has no tongue–how can he speak? Perhaps the fall addled her….

Creeney shook him, forcing his attention back to her. What is your name?

Smarach, he replied silently.

Excerpt from When Dragons Wake, Chapter 19

“Sire, there is nothing left to do–she will be guarded day and night by your finest–”

Ceannard slammed his fist on the marble table, interrupting his captain.  Watching from her hiding place behind one of the wall tapestries, Meretrix flinched.  “Meru’feral was my finest!”

The council chamber fell silent.  Ceannard’s oldest advisor, Donal, deepened his frown beneath his silver beard.  The scar that curved down the side of his face gleamed in the candlelight and his aura, the orange of power, dimmed; he was as troubled as the other men gathered there.

Falsayer sat opposite him, surrounded by the yellow-red glow of his desire to control.  Ceannard’s captains also sat at the table.  Their auras were as varied as their ambitions and fears, but all were true and clear in their loyalty to the great lord.

Asdeach, clad like Donal and the captains in fur pelisse over heavy wool tunic and leggings, scratched his balding head.  The younger of Ceannard’s two advisors, he had earned his position at the great lord’s side on the Northern Frontier five summers ago when the cavalry unit he led killed the chieftain of Clan Kionsag in a border skirmish.  Ever confident and daring, he exuded his usual turquoise aura of cockiness and humor even now.  “Sire, there is but one way to outplay an Uath-amas.”

Ceannard, his orange aura the brightest of all, leaned back in his chair.  The late afternoon sunlight streaming through the lead glass window behind him turned his mane into a halo of silver flames. “How?”

“You must find yourself another.”

Donal glowered at Asdeach.  Falsayer started to speak, but Lord Ceannard silenced him with a look.

Meretrix stretched forth her mind along the threads of light connecting them and touched the thoughts of the men who now watched their great lord in bewilderment.  He is going mad….  Falsayer is right….  The girl has bewitched him….  He’ll soon be wandering the castle like his son, muttering to no one but himself….

Ceannard folded his arms over his kionbeist fur pelisse and smoothed his beard with a hand.  Meretrix did not need to touch his thoughts to know he was mulling over Asdeach’s words.  “One does not simply find another Meru’feral.”

“Perhaps there is another his equal,” Asdeach said.

“Then why do I not now have him?”

“Or her?”  Asdeach shrugged.  “The mistress of the Uath-amas might be a great mage, but she is still a woman, and so, capricious by nature.  She gives her warriors leave to serve others whenever the whim strikes her.  At any given time, there could be ten like Meru, or a hundred.  Or none.”

Donal fisted the hand he rested on the table and turned to Ceannard.  “Sire, this is ill-advised–”

Ceannard raised his hand and Donal fell silent, his mouth a hard line beneath his beard.

The great lord pushed his chair back and stood, raking his gaze over those gathered around him.  “Then go.  Find me another.  And let it be known I will pay him twice the amount of the bounty I have placed on the wolfshead, Meru’feral.”

Excerpt from When Dragons Wake, Chapter 18

Meretrix threw her fur robe over the gown she had put back on.  She turned to Nikko, who stood by the great lord’s bed.  Wait here while I fetch the Muilteen to take us back.

Nikko nodded and took a step toward the fur rug, where Ceannard had tossed her veil. As she moved, her chemise slid between her legs, abrading the fresh brand on her inner thigh. The searing pain stopped her short and made her cringe. She grabbed the bedpost for support.

Meretrix rushed to her side. Remember the–

“Spell you taught me.” Nikko, too drained to communicate silently, whispered over the snores emanating from behind the bed curtains. “Yes, I’ve been reciting it. It’s not helping much.”

Meretrix placed a hand on her shoulder. For a moment, Nikko thought she saw pity in her eyes, but it vanished before she could be sure. I have burn salve in my room. She retrieved Nikko’s veil from the gold and red carpet and handed it to her, then lowered her own veil and rounded the table that held the remains of their meal.

Meretrix was already out the door when Nikko realized her robe was by the fireplace, on the bench where Meretrix had held her hand while Ceannard burned his sunburst crest into her flesh.

Nikko crossed the carpet, reciting the pain-banishing spell as she went, to little good. By the time she reached the bench, she was in tears. She picked up her robe and sat, softly chanting the spell, waiting for the pain to subside. Her gaze came to rest on the length of lossanstral above the fireplace, draped over crossed swords and a shield blazed with the sunburst that now marked her. The cloth was beautiful, radiant, but not as beautiful or radiant as the length Beolach had shown her in Raon-clachan. The door opened and she turned as Meretrix quickly closed it behind her.

Meretrix lifted her veil. Why aren’t you ready? Her face was stern as she crossed the carpet. Put your veil on and– She stopped mid-stride, staring at Nikko’s bodice.

Nikko followed her gaze.

Through the embroidered silk of her gown, the amulet was glowing.

Excerpt from When Dragons Wake, Chapter 17

“I can teach many things, not all of it sanctioned by the Temple, to one with the desire and capability to learn–and knows how to keep her mouth shut.” Meretrix inclined her head. “Are you such a one, Nikko O’Roun?”

Nikko could hardly believe her ears. Surely, such an offer would not come without a price. “W-what would these lessons cost me?”

Meretrix slid Nikko’s veil through her hand, toying with it. “Your life.”

“What?”

“Your life.” She laid the veil in her lap and folded her hands on it. “There may come a time when others besides Meru’feral will want you to lay down your life. You mustn’t allow this to happen.”

“Who would want me to die?” By now, Nikko’s heart was thudding so hard she could scarce hear her own voice.

“Besides the priests? The Sisterhood; but for them you must sacrifice yourself willingly–easier on their consciences that way, I suppose.”

“Sacrifice myself? For what?”

“For nothing. Your life for my knowledge, that is the price I ask.” She leaned forward, rested her forearms on her lap, hands clasped, and blue eyes locked with Nikko’s. “Will you pay it?”

Pay it? Nikko did not move, did not breathe, for fear she would shatter like new ice on water, smashed by a fist. She twice had, and lost, the opportunity to apprentice with a mage, first with the halfling sorceress and then with Dro’cree. Now, the Jeeaght were giving her a third, perhaps last, chance to do it. To save Beolach.

Pay it? If there were the slightest chance she could save Beolach from his creature, she would pay any price, even her own life, to take it.

Slowly, Nikko nodded. She would pay whatever she must.