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Monthly Archives: September 2013
- by Tara Maya
Not Yet Forgotten
Red sand blew over the wasteland. It gummed up my rebreather, and coated my faceplate. My one-suit, once shiny white, had faded to dingy taupe under the ceaseless coatings of dust. I stumbled along, already exhausted after three hours on the morning shift of the dig, discouraged because I’d found nothing.
Then I tripped over it: A rock, barely above level, with a distinct right angle. An Arnellian artifact.
Most of the ruins on Arnellios V were buried under the dust. Millions of years of dust, solidified into sand, into mud, and finally into solid rock. My job was to unearth the buried secrets, to unlock the technology that had vanished with the Arnellians themselves half a million years ago.
I called in the excavators. The robots used laser to patiently and delicately dislodge the artifact from the surrounding rock. I took a water break at the base camp tent. I monitored progress on my faceplate, but I knew an artifact of this size—it would probably be 2.3 kilometers square, like others we’d found—would take half a day for the robots to excavate. The little bit I’d tripped over was literally just the tip of the artifact.
I should have felt elated at the find, but instead, I sank deeper into my malaise. It’s depressing to tramp through the ruins of a dead civilization day after day. The hope is that their technology will one day be of use to humans, but since we have no way to crack their language, the chances of that are slim. Our computer translators are excellent, but the fact is, without a basis for comparison—a known language, or a live speaker—it’s pretty much impossible to crack a dead script.
Bruno G. found me. I was lost in my own gloomy thoughts and didn’t notice him before he clapped me on the back with a huge whoop.
“Do you know what you’ve done?” he cried gleefully.
“Huh? What? Oh, the rock. Yeah, another one.”
“It has writing!”
“Most do.”
“Look at your screen!” he ordered. He could barely contain his grin.
I peeked again, but still didn’t see anything special. The Arnellians used a distinct blocky script, and the stone was covered with it. There was also a curly script beneath it….
I felt my stomach drop.
“Oh my god,” I whispered, “Is that Gyrlish?”
“It sure is!” Bruno whooped again. “We’ve found it! We’ve found our Rosetta Stone! The translation computers are chugging away now, comparing the two alphabets. We’ll have a full translation program for Arnellian by the end of the day!”
“I can’t believe it.”
My depression evaporated. I whooped along with Bruno. The rest of the team heard the news and gathered at the base camp tent. We took out the good stuff, that we’d be saving for the end of the dig, and poured it out until we were all tipsy. We sang old camp songs and told dirty jokes.
The first translations started coming in from the computers by the end of the evening shift, just as Bruno had predicted. He handed me a print out on a plastisheet. We didn’t normally print, but it was tradition for the first formal translation of a new alien language.
“The honor belongs to you,” Bruno said. “It’s the translation of the stone you found. What does it say?”
The whole crew of thirty-one archeologists fell silent as I looked down at the plastisheet. It was already slightly pinkish from dust.
“It says…” I began.
My throat choked up. Not just because of the importance of the moment, but because of the words.
“It says: In eternal memorial of those who gave their lives for us. You are not yet forgotten.”
- by Tara Maya
11. The Witness
“Zumo?” Auntie Ugly asked her son.
More slowly than his mother, Zumo picked a stone. He threw it on the black mat. He had to walk by where Kavio knelt on the adobe floor to reach his seat again. Just as he passed, Kavio looked up and met his eyes.
“Is that what you really think I deserve, cousin?” Kavio asked in such a low voice that only Zumo heard him. “For what crime? The lies you told here or because I know the truth about you?”
Zumo flushed, whether with guilt or anger, it was impossible to tell.
“No one will listen to anything you have to say now, Kavio,” Zumo replied, also too quietly for anyone else to hear. “They’ll know you’re just clawing at worms to try to save your own hide.”
He stomped back to his seat, where he replaced his mask.
Auntie Ugly had sentenced the son of her rival to death; all eyes now fell upon Father to see if he would defend his son.
Father’s heavy shoulder blanket seemed to weigh him down as he walked to the jar to pick up a stone. He stood there a long while, turning the rock round and round in his hands.
“I would like to speak,” he said finally, looking straight at Kavio, “on behalf of the accusers.”
Surprise stirred the onlookers. Kavio just smiled grimly. He wasn’t surprised at all. He’d known from the day his father had called for the trial that Father would put political need above family sentiment. Sure enough, Father gave a pretty little speech, distancing himself from his son. He locked his jaw when he finished and clutched his fist around his stone. “I too must cast my stone with justice, even if it means the death of my own son, my only child.”
He threw his rock on the black mat. He met Kavio’s eyes without flinching, but when Mother gasped, Father would not look at her.
Mother stood up next and pleaded on Kavio’s behalf. Even she would not declare him innocent. Instead, she simply begged for mercy—exile instead of death. Mother picked a stone out of the jar and placed it on the orange mat between the white and the black.
Kavio felt his face burn with shame. He wouldn’t beg for his life himself, and he didn’t want her to crawl for him either. Besides, death would be easier than exile. He didn’t think he could bear the humiliation of wearing ash. Exile meant fleeing his home like a vole from a prairie fire. Exile meant scorn would meet him wherever he went. Exile meant he would not have the opportunity to finish unraveling the puzzle he had discovered in the heart of the Labyrinth, the only magic he still cared about.
Far, far better to die.
One by one the rest of the Zavaedis came to cast their stones for either exoneration, exile, or death. Some spoke to the assembly of their…
TO BE CONTINUED
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Author’s Comments
Thank you, evilrandomguyblah, for the art. The artist says of this is a, “conceptual piece of Arthur as a savage, from one of the prologues to Le Morte.”
- by Tara Maya
Broken Aro by Jen Wylie
Open your eyes to darkness. What do you see? Does the darkness frighten you? Now imagine the darkness being the cargo hold of a slave ship. Your city has fallen. Your family is most likely dead. You don’t know anyone around you, and some of them aren’t even human. Giving up would be so easy to do, but not for Arowyn Mason. Not after being raised in a military family with seven brothers. Every great story should begin with a plan. Aro’s was to escape and to survive.
Escape comes, but at a price. As they reach the shore, Aro and the other survivors learn that freedom doesn’t mean safety. The slavers want their property back and will do anything to get it. The party uses every ounce of their brute strength, a hearty helping of cunning, and even ancient magics to keep themselves alive. Sickness, danger, and even love surprise them at every turn. Dealing with danger becomes their way of life, but none of them ever considered that nothing can be quite as dangerous as a prophecy. Running turns into another race altogether as her world falls to pieces again and again.
Broken Aro is the first novel in The Broken Ones series. You can download it on Amazon or purchase it in paperback from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and CreateSpace.
Excerpt
Her eyes opened to darkness.
She wasn’t surprised. When bad things happened and you finally opened your eyes it was always dark wasn’t it? Because otherwise when you woke up you wouldn’t be scared, not right away, not until you remembered. Yet in darkness nothing else could be seen but the memories of what had happened, it didn’t matter if you opened your eyes or kept them squeezed closed.
What happened…
She closed her eyes again, not against the memories, but the sudden tears and choking sobs. Still, she tried to notremember, but her head hurt. All of her hurt, but her head hurt the worst. She’d been hit by something, very hard. She had no trouble remembering the pain. She remembered falling to the ground, her brothers screaming her name over the insane loudness of the fighting and everything fading to nothing as darkness claimed her.
She sucked in a deep breath. The fighting. Yes, the city had been attacked. The walls had been breached. There had been fighting in the streets. She had been fighting. Her brothers had been trying to get her out. They had been so close. Had they?
She shifted and froze, terror creeping up her throat and choking her at the same time until nothing but a strangled gurgle came out.
They had not.
She knew because she felt the cold metal shackles around each wrist, felt the weight of the chain between them. The same fetters bound her ankles. Dirty straw prickled her cheek and the other smells of her surroundings overcame her. They overwhelmed her and made her gag. The rank scents of piss, shit and vomit almost covered the stale reek of sweat and the tang of salt.
Salt.
She’d thought her head had just been spinning, but no, everything moved, lurching and swaying. She was at sea.
At sea in chains meant only one thing. The rumors had been true. The Gelanians had allied with the Franuan Slavers. Beneath the combined attack, Kingsport had fallen and the Frans had taken their cut, citizens to sell as slaves. She was a slave.
Well that sucks.
The idea terrified her, and left her cold and shaking. Squeezing her eyes closed, she fought to push away the horrifying images suddenly assaulting her. Breathing slowly helped a little. The shaking stopped and finally she could breathe again.
She opened her eyes, straining them against the darkness. Had night fallen? Could that be why it was so dark?Her eyes slowly adjusted until she could make out vague shapes; the bars of the cell in the ships hold and darker shapes of people sitting before her in the small cell.
She concentrated, squinting her eyes and counting. Six others shared the cell. Her brothers? “Paul?” The creak of the ship and the murmurs, curses, and sobs of the other captives in the hold almost drowned out her small voice.
“Boy’s awake,” one of the shapes said. Definitely not one of her brothers.
She stiffened. They’d called her boy. Even after all she’d been through, it was quite a blow to her self-esteem. She frowned in confusion for a moment, until she remembered. Her brothers had dressed her in their old clothes, old bits of armor that sort of fit. They’d even hacked off her long hair…
She cursed them under her breath again for that. Then she almost smiled, remembering Sammy’s face when he’d done it. Her brothers were such morons. They always had been. Yet they’d been stuck with raising her, and what did they know of girls? Her mother had died when she was four, and losing her hadn’t been easy on any of them.
Father had been a regiment Commander and away a lot. They’d all managed to take care of her somehow, the younger of her brothers watching over her until eventually they’d all joined the army. But she’d been twelve by the time the youngest of them had enlisted. She’d been able to take care of the house while they served their time on the border. They didn’t worry about her much. The army wives had helped, keeping an eye on her for them.
However, father had died two years ago at Demet’s Pass. It had been hard, losing him. Harder than when mother had died because she hadn’t been old enough then to know what it meant. Not seeing him at the head of their big old table, with his gentle smile, had been tough on all of them. It still was. It had been harder this past spring when her brothers had all ridden out again. Because death had become something real, she knew they might not come back.
She was fifteen now. Not really a child anymore. So she had faked a smile and waved goodbye to them all when really fear had made her want to scream instead. They had all come home, but with an enemy army at their heels. They’d been afraid then, afraid for her. They knew things she didn’t, things like what would happen to a young girl if the city fell. However, she wasn’t a woman yet, not in appearance at any rate. Tall and gangly with no figure whatsoever. No wonder she could pass for a boy.
“Boy.”
The man who had spoken before broke her thoughts. She must have been hit in the head hard for her mind to wander back into the past. She managed to croak an incoherent sound indicating she’d heard him.
“You alive over there?”
“Yes,” she lied and waited. No one else spoke. No one came rushing to her side. Panic quickened her breath as fear sped her heart. Her brothers weren’t here. If they had been they’d have harassed everyone to find out where she was. At least… they weren’t on this boat. Unfortunately, the slavers had a whole fleet. They must be on another boat. She had to believe that. She closed her eyes tightly again. Yes, they’d been placed on another boat.
Because if they weren’t then they were all dead.
- by Tara Maya
10. The Accusation
The Unfinished Song: Initiate
 |
| “Single beam” by Paulo Cammeli |
“Kavio committed the most serious crime of which a Zavaedi dancer is capable. He concocted his own Pattern, a dance unknown to our ancestors. He cannot name the teacher that taught it to him, nor the society who held its secret. That is hexcraft.
“That in itself would be reason to discipline him. But on top of that, he used this Pattern for the vilest of purposes, to harm the community that bore him and to deprive his neighbors of their very livelihood.”
Kavio glanced involuntarily at Mother. He had never seen her so ashen. Though a part of him wanted to spit in Father’s face, the knowledge that he had disappointed Mother burned like chili pepper in his mouth. But no matter what happened, he’d be cursed before he’d show how he felt in front of this assemblage of vultures and jackals. Or in front of his father.
He lifted his chin and faced his accuser with his most insolent smile.
As he’d known it would, his smile infuriated Auntie Ugly. She jabbed a bony finger at him.
“Three days ago, Kavio, you went into a room here in the Laby- rinth and performed a hex that diverted a part of the river upstream from the Valley of the Aelfae. By doing so, you have lowered the water level in the fields, making it possible that not enough silt will be deposited by planting season.
“As witness, I call my own son, Zumo the Cloud Dancer.”
Kavio’s cousin, a young man of similar age, build, and height, stood. He removed his mask of blue shells. While Kavio seethed inside, Zumo repeated the lies that had led to this trial in the first place. Not that anything Zumo testified was false; his deception lay in what he didn’t say.
After Zumo, a second witness repeated the story of having found Kavio dancing alone in a kiva in the Labyrinth.
“Thank you both,” Auntie Ugly said smugly after the second wit- ness sat down again. “Kavio, do you deny these charges?”
“I don’t deny what I did,” he said. “I deny that I invented the Pattern, I deny that it was hexcraft, and I deny that it was intended to harm our people.”
When Auntie Ugly sneered at him, the anger that had been pum- meling his belly these last days bettered his sense, and he added sarcastically, “I do not deny that there are times I wish I had let you all drown.”
He knew it was a mistake as soon as he said it. The masked Tav- aedies and Zavaedies hissed and shouted.
“Zavaedi Kavio’s guilt is plain,” said Auntie Ugly. “I cast my stone with justice. I call for Kavio’s death!”
She glided to the pottery jar and pulled out a smooth, gray stone, then tossed it on the black mat.
Big surprise there, thought Kavio. You’ve always hated me, you old toad. I never even understood why.…
TO BE CONTINUED
Download the complete book for FREE or buy it on Amazon as an ebook
Author’s Comments
Paulo Cammeli contributed the art today. I really love his paintings. I should note, however, that there are actually no iron chains in Faearth. Their technology is neolithic. No books, no chain-mail, no swords, no saddles — although some of them do ride horses, it’s rare, and they use a hoop, not a bridle.
- by Tara Maya
The Unicorn Girl by M.L. LeGette
A Fairy Tale, Coming of Age Fantasy
Leah Vindral is suffocating—trapped in her own skin.
In a land where magic is feared, magic saved her from death … but it came with a terrible price. Marked forever, she is shunned and isolated by those she loves most.
Brimming with bitter rage at those who abandoned her, Leah flees from her childhood home only to be swept into an impending war: Mora, a wicked witch, has been imprisoned for years, waiting like a spider in the folds of her web for the chance to regain the powers once stripped from her. It is there, while she waits, that she learns of a strange young girl … a girl who can speak to unicorns.
Now Leah must save the country that shuns her, for if Mora returns to power, all will be lost. But can Leah, who is so frightened and confused herself, find the strength to save them all?
Buy The Unicorn Girl on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Excerpt
Ten minutes later Ian opened the door to his room, on the second floor of a decrepit looking inn, and I sank onto a squeaky bed with a slight shiver.
“So,” Ian persisted. “Why were some bloody knights chasin’ you?”
I stared at my feet in response.
“Oh no,” said Ian, as he shut the door with a snap. “We’re not playin’ that game again.” He walked over to a chair, dragged it in front of me and turned it around backwards. He leaned on it for a minute and said abruptly, “I’ll make tea.”
I sat numbly on the bed and watched him boil water. My mind was horribly blank.
“There,” he pushed a mug of tea into my hands and sat down, wrapping his arms around the back of the chair and staring at me expectantly. “So?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I got time.”
I glared at him. I could lie, but for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had been running for so long, and suddenly, I couldn’t take another step. Before I had even tried to consider what might happen if I told him the truth, words spilled from my mouth.
He sat in silence, nodding occasionally as I told him everything. Flashes of the ball, Lavena, Father, King Rowan’s plan, the sickness, the recovery, the elves, the monsters with red eyes, and Mora all sped through my brain and out of my mouth. His eyes darkened at the mention of Mora and his mouth tightened, but he didn’t stop my narrative.
“And I just saw Sir William Shanklin tell King Rowan what he learned from Mora and now he’s looking for me. He’ll use me to find them, I’m sure of it—that is if Mora doesn’t get to me first. But I don’t know where the unicorns are and I’m tired of running!”
Ian rose from his chair and walked to a grimy window with his back to me.
“We’ll just have to find them then, won’t we,” he said finally.
“What?”
He turned to me, his face set.
“The unicorns. We’ve got to find them. You’re the only one who can talk to them, so you’re the only one who can warn them. We’ll have to leave now though. I’m sure King Rowan will have the whole city searched by mornin’.”
“Yes, but what’s with all this we business?”
“What? Didn’t you know? I’m coming with you.” Ian grabbed a sack, walked to the door, opened it and headed down the hall as I followed him.
“No you’re not.”
“Yes I am.”
I glared at him.
“My dear Leah, I don’t believe you’ve had the pleasure of meeting my stubborn side,” he said with a smile as he started down the stairs.
“But—but what about your future and all that?” I asked desperately as I hurried to catch up with him.
“My mother gave me one piece of advice as I left our humble home,” Ian said conversationally, “She said, ‘Don’t you follow anything mysterious!’ And you, Leah, are the most mysterious thing I’ve ever met.”“But your mother told you not to!”
We were outside once again and mounting our horses.
“Yes, and you might also need to know that I always do the exact opposite of what my mother wants,” Ian said, and with that he started off at a gallop, with Iris and I following in his wake.
Find more from M.L. LeGette on her blog, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads and Pinterest.
- by Tara Maya
TORCH (a Take It Off novel) by Cambria Hebert
If you can’t take the heat… stay away from the flame.
Katie Parks has been on her own since the age of fifteen. All she’s ever wanted is a place to call her own—a life that is wholly hers that no one can take away. She thought she finally had it, but with the strike of a single match, everything she worked so hard for is reduced to a pile of smoking ash. And she almost is too.
Now she’s being stalked by someone who’s decided it’s her time to die. The only thing standing in the path of her blazing death is sexy firefighter Holt Arkain.
Katie’s body might be safe with Holt… but her heart is another story.
As the danger heats up, sparks fly and the only thing Katie knows for sure is that her whole life is about to go up in flames.
***This is a new adult contemporary novel and contains sexual content and graphic language. It is not intended for young adult readers.***
Download Torch on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.