Wildmane

by Todd Fahnestock

  “That’s love?” the bearded man asked.

  “We spoke of this before,” Bands said quietly. “We talked of it many times.”

  “Oh. I forgot.”

  The corner of the dragon’s long, scaly mouth curved upward in a smile. “He needed to fall in love with someone else. Ethiel was cunning. She thought it was the one thing he could not do.” She paused. “But he did it.” Saraphazia detected admiration in her voice this time.

  “And so,” Saraphazia said, “her master spell is broken. Go to him.”

  The dragon watched as Mirolah took Medophae’s hand and they walked up the beach. She let out a long breath. “No.”

  Saraphazia was disappointed. “Your restoration is his prize. He has longed for you for four hundred years. He has lain in torment for you. Will you not give him what he craves?”

  “He has found what he craves.”

  “The girl? She is a human. You are the one he wants.”

  Bands slowly shook her head. “Not true, Saraphazia. She is the one he wants. She is the one he needs, otherwise Ethiel’s trigger spell could not have been tripped.”

  “Then the Red Weaver wins,” Saraphazia said, disgusted.

  Bands stretched her wings, flapped them three times. “No. The poor woman, she never won anything she really wanted.”

  “Then you will forsake the man you love for some foolish sense of fair play?”

  “What you said was right, Saraphazia. Mirolah is human. I am a dragon. What is a human life span to me? Seven decades is a short time to wait.”

  Saraphazia shook her head. “You make no more sense than the humans do.”

  Thalius laughed.

  “Begone from my ocean.” Saraphazia waved impatiently. “I tire of you.”

  Bands leapt into the air, flapping her wings and hovering. “I thank you beyond words for your assistance, goddess.”

  Saraphazia said nothing. She turned her tail up and dove into her ocean.

  Tarithalius’s flippant mien faded once his sister was gone. He looked at Bands solemnly. “And so you feel no pain in having to wait for your lover’s words in your ear, for his touch on your skin?”

  “Oh, Tarithalius. Don’t mock me or I shall break. I must be strong. For him. For her. For me as well. What price to take him back and leave her cast aside? That is a shabby path, indeed. Mirolah sacrificed everything to come to this shore. I have waited four hundred years; I can wait seventy more for the sake of the woman who saved us.”

  “Can you?” Tarithalius asked, his voice low.

  “Stop it, Thalius. Please stop.”

  He nodded. “Very well then.”

  Reader Letter

  Wildmane is the most personal project I’ve ever worked on. He’s been in my life for as long as I can remember. The character was born in 1986. I was a junior in high school then, and on the weekends I would play Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP—anyone remember MERP?) with my friend and roommate Marvin. Initially, I wrote half a novel of how Wildmane came to be a demigod, of how he and his band of friends set out on the legendary quest to destroy the god Dervon the Diseased. The story was a summer project, brainstormed with Marvin during those lazy teenage days when it seemed all we had was time.

  But when summer ended, so did the book. I moved out of Marvin’s house, began the series of misadventures that would comprise my youth, and I left the unfinished story to gather dust. Six years later, in college, I wrote a new story with Wildmane, set 1,400 years after he gained his immortality. During those college years, I lived in several big houses with my friends, and I would read chapters to them. Wildmane becoming a part of our daily vocabulary. When we would meet a rude person or get into a scary situation, we would say, “This story needs a Wildmane!”, meaning that Wildmane could overcome any obstacle, and was particularly good at putting rude people in their places. As my skills as a writer improved, I continued coming back to the story, rewriting it again and again. Some of those versions made my friends gnash their teeth as I took the characters places they didn’t like. But that first attempt in college, that first version, though it has been rewritten dozens of times, is the essence of the book in your hands right now. I’m happy to say that most of those college friends are still a regular part of my life. That they get to see this book in its final form makes me smile.

  So, welcome to the land of Amarion and to the story of the unstoppable Mirolah and the immortal Wildmane. Thank you for coming. I hope you enjoy your stay.

  Free Bonus for Newsletter Subscribers!

  Obviously, I spent a lot of time creating this world, and developed a detailed timeline for its history. To get your free copy of the timeline and stay informed about upcoming book releases, giveaways, or enter contests that I hold for readers, be sure to subscribe to my mailing list, Todd Fahnestock’s Readers Group: https://tinyurl.com/ToddNewsletter

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  Todd Fahnestock

  Acknowledgments

  A big thanks to Marvin Guymon, who was here at the beginning of the creation of this character, and who spent hours with me coming up with so many wonderful, clever elements to Wildmane’s history. This journey began with you in your loft, my friend.

  Thanks to Young Sara, for loving this story so much. This book wouldn’t be here without you. Your passion for Wildmane and Mirolah, Bands and Silasa, Orem and Stavark—for the whole crew—was compelling. Thank you for staying on me about it.. You made me do this.

  Thanks to Giles Carwyn, who saw and supported so many iterations of this story. You built the bedrock of the chapter describing Historia and the wondrous fountain of Natra. Those shoemaking elves finally get to have their gift make a public appearance.

  Thanks to Jenny Tavis, who created depth for this world by inspiring the legendary Amarion bard, Thedore Stok, and by creating the legendary Amarion bard, Rajiv Teniset (I'm thinking there may need to be a short story soon about those two). Thank you for the creative letters from Rajiv to Thedore, and for your amazing sestina about Wildmane.

  Thanks to Elaine Rivas, for giving me inspiration for many scenes in the original story, and also for being so excited about the “fire kitty!”

  Thanks to Megan Foss, my first reader and eternal fan. Thank you for always ALWAYS being first in line to read what comes next. You keep me going.

  Thanks to Langdon Foss for the gorgeous map! You are a consummate professional, my friend, and I’m honored to have your work between the pages of this story.

  Thanks to Rashed Al-Akroka. I’m over-the-moon about the covers you created. You captured the essence of the characters seemingly effortlessly in your wonderful illustrations. I feel so lucky to have them gracing the covers of these books.

  Thanks to Pam McCutcheon and Laura Hayden, my partners in crime, my fellow publishing pirates. It is such a pleasure to work with the two of you. I always come away smiling. Thank you for your hard work and your support of this story.

  And, as always, thanks to my amazing wife Lara. You are my Bands. It all begins and ends with you.

  About the Author

  TODD FAHNESTOCK won the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age Award for one of his short stories and is a writer of fantasy for all age ranges. He wrote the bestselling The Wishing World, a middle grade portal fantasy series which began as bedtime stories for his children. With Giles Carwyn, he wrote the bestselling “George R. R. Martin-esque” epic fantasy Heartstone Trilogy: Heir of Autumn, Mistress of Winter, and Queen of Oblivion. He just finished the Threadweavers series, which includes Wildmane, The GodSpill, and Threads of Amarion, and is now working on The Whisper Prince trilogy. Stories are his passion, but Todd’s greatest accomplishment is his quirky, fun-loving family. When he’s not writing, he goes on morning runs with his daughter, who helps him plot stories. In the afternoons, he practices Tae Kwon Do with his son. In between, he drives his beloved wife crazy with the emotional rollercoaster that is being a full-time author.
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br />   Connect with Todd at ToddFahnestock.com or on Facebook at Facebook.com/todd.fahnestock/

  Also by Todd Fahnestock

  Threadweavers Series

  Wildmane

  The GodSpill (coming soon)

  Threads of Amarion (coming soon)

  The Whisper Prince Trilogy

  Fairmist

  The Undying Man (coming September 2018)

  The Slate Wizards (coming October 2018)

  The Heartstone Trilogy

  (with Giles Carwyn)

  Heir of Autumn

  Mistress of Winter

  Queen of Oblivion

  The Wishing World Series

  The Wishing World

  Loremaster

  The Hate Man (coming 2019)

  Excerpt from The GodSpill, Book 2 of the Threadweaver Series

  Bands waited, watching the other dragons fill the translucent ledges above her. She had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well for her. There were nearly a hundred of those ovoid ledges, bordering the enormous natural amphitheater in which she stood, lined with hundreds of dragons. The nearest were right over her head, close enough that Bands could reach up with her long neck and bump them with her nose. The farthest dragons were so small they looked about the size of her knuckle.

  In front of her was a half dome over the raised dais where Avakketh would stand when he arrived. Beautiful fountains of water spiraled up from spouts in the ground, rising until they reached each invisible ledge, where they flowed into invisible trenches, allowing the dragon spectators to drink while they watched. Because the ledges could not be seen, the streams of water looked like veins running through some translucent leviathan whose body was comprised of colorful dragons. There were orange dragons. Blue dragons. Silver dragons. Purple dragons. Black dragons. Different dragons of so many shades that no two seemed the same. There were no red dragons, of course. Red was the divine color, Avakketh’s color. No dragon had ever been born with red scales.

  There were, of course, dragons of multiple colors, like her. She saw Korducalikan, a black dragon with white patterns racing from her nose down her flanks. Her wings looked like forks of lightning. Biridirilaculalan and his family, several purple dragons with light spots, stood halfway down the amphitheater. Bands saw Vidilarrilan, a silver dragon with golden patterns like flames rising up from his claws. He was a childhood friend. She even saw her mother and father, with similar markings to her own. Father rested on his haunches, with his coppery body bearing yellow bands from his chin all the way down his long neck to his chest. Mother had coiled up like a snake, dark green with a light green stripe from her chin to her tail. Her glittering eyes watched Bands, though at first glance she might have seemed asleep.

  Bands glanced over the hundreds of dragons that had gathered, and a familiar feeling of foreboding seeped through her. She had felt this feeling—like a tickle of snowflakes on the inside of her throat and belly—every time she and Medophae went into battle. Returning to Irgakth, land of the dragons, Bands had not expected a warm homecoming. She had expected to be reprimanded. She was an oddity, a deviant; she knew that. Most dragons looked upon humans as ants, barely worthy of attention. Bands, on the other hand, was fascinated with them. She enjoyed watching them, interacting with them. She had fallen in love with them as a whole. And she had fallen in love with a few in specific, a mating kind of love, the kind of bond reserved for two dragons who wished permission to give birth. To most dragons, this was akin to what humans would consider bestiality.

  So Bands had expected to face consequences if she wished to re-enter the embrace of her god, like all the rest of her kind. She had hoped at least that Avakketh would reprimand her in private. That was obviously not going to be the case. That Avakketh wanted to see her in the amphitheater with every dragon in the vicinity invited did not bode well at all.

  As ever when she felt that cold, tickling feeling in her throat, she felt a sweep of calm come over her. Strangely, it was Medophae’s passion that taught her to do this. Whenever she sensed danger, she became icy calm, using those cool prickles and imagining them spreading throughout her body, bringing her a placid state of mind she could use to think, to strategize.

  In moments like this, she felt as though her eyes became a separate part of her body, as if they were floating over her head, seeing with a perspective that would allow no fear. She smiled slightly, thinking that her many fellows far down the ledges of the amphitheater looked like a kaleidoscope of butterflies. Dainty, fanciful, purposeless ephemera that flitted on whatever breeze was convenient.

  Such a thought would have been a grave insult to any dragon, so Bands kept it carefully to herself, cultivating the mirth that smothered her fear.

  She thought instead about what she had seen when she’d come north. Things had changed in Irgakth. There were young dragons she didn’t recognize. Dragons lived so long that they rarely asked Avakketh for the gift of creating a new birth. In fact, Bands had met almost every dragon alive before she went south to seek her fortune. But obviously, many had asked for this privilege lately. That meant something. She didn’t know what, but it meant something.

  Secondly, as she flew north, she noticed many other dragon cities that hadn’t been there before. Dragons were not known for change, but they had been industrious over the past centuries, and many of their constructs had been created using threadweaving, which meant Avakketh had been involved. Humans drew their threadweaving power from the GodSpill, the creative god force that had accidentally spilled from the Godgate millennia ago. Dragons drew their threadweaving ability straight from their god, Avakketh. When Bands had left long ago to explore the human lands, Avakketh had cut her off from his power, and she’d had to learn to threadweave like a human.

  At last, the ledges had been filled, and an odd quiet descended on the amphitheater. Bands turned away from the thunder of dragons to the front of the amphitheater, a red granite dais where Avakketh attended on his dragons when there was reason to do so. The smooth, black stone wall behind the dais shimmered, and Avakketh emerged through it like it was a waterfall. The smallest dragons were larger than most human houses. Bands herself was longer than two large houses, tip to tail.

  Avakketh was immense, easily five times Bands’s size. He could have lay down on the palace at Calsinac and crushed it. He came to the center of the dais, looming over her, surveying the assembled dragons like they might challenge him. Three white dragons came through the shimmering black wall and flanked Avakketh like dogs would flank a hunter. Each of them crouched, serpentine necks arcing up like a question mark, all focused on Bands. She recognized each of them, of course. One was even a childhood friend, Zynderilifakyz.

  “Randorus Ak-nin Ackli Forckandor.” Avakketh spoke her full name to the crowd without looking at her, and, for a moment, it seemed as if he was demanding that she pop up, raising her wing in the air to be counted.

  “My lord,” she bowed her head. “Your life is my breath. Your words are my commands. Your eyes, my vision. How may I serve you?” She spoke the ritual words of the dragonhood. Any dragon speaking to Avakketh was required to say these words when first addressed by their god.

  His huge, horned head lowered, dark eyes glaring at her. “You mock us,” he said.

  Her heart dipped. Even though she had known a reprimand was coming, the words hurt. “My lord, it is not my intention—”

  “It is your intention,” he cut her off. “You dare to speak the words of the dragonhood, when in fact you flaunt them with your actions. You claim that my life is your breath, but you have forsaken natural threadweaving for that aberration humans stole from the Godgate. My words have never been your command. Dragons are forbidden to live among humans, yet you prefer their company to the company of your own kind. You claim my eyes are your vision, but you refuse to see the humans for what they really are. You are a liar.”

  She bowed her head to cover her defiance. Yes, she had disobeyed him. Yes, she had come expecting a rebuke, but her
anger flared inside her. Hadn’t he already punished her? Avakketh was behind the spell Ethiel had cast; Saraphazia and Tarithalius had deduced that much. No human, even one as powerful as Ethiel, could have imprisoned a god. But Avakketh could have. Avakketh had created that ruby, put it in Ethiel’s hands. Avakketh had trapped the brother he hated and punished an errant daughter who had disobeyed him. “I am sorry I have disappointed you, but I return with a completion of the penance you set upon me.”

  “Hardly. You return as a traitor.”

  She looked up. She had seen a dragon reprimanded before. Avakketh should have demanded redress to the rest of dragonkind in the form of service. Sometimes for as much as a hundred years. This wasn’t to be a reprimand. This was something else.

  She tried to rise above her own thoughts, to consider this dispassionately, but she couldn’t. Her anger boiled and, behind it, fear. She had spent four hundred years longing for her beloved, trapped in an abyss with nothing but the constant droning of Tarithalius’s bad jokes.

  Avakketh watched her, his black eyes hard.

  “My lord...” She finally managed to find her tongue. “You...locked me away for four hundred and thirty seven years...” She glanced at the dragons surrounding her. None seemed the least bit compassionate. She thought of looking at her parents, but she couldn’t stand it if she found the same coldness in their eyes, so she avoided that side of the amphitheater. “Yes, I loved a human. Is that crime so horrible that it warranted four hundred years of my life?”