Mary nuzzled against his shoulder and traced her finger against the clean line of his jaw. "The city archives must have a likeness. Search under magus."
"I've tried. The archives have no record of his involvement in the Conquest." He spoke softly, as from the boundary of a dream. "The official histories of all the dominions claim that Hu'dre Vra perished under the hand of Margravine Jyoti, the last of the Doomed Odawls. And they say that she died less than a thousand days later, in the firestorm that devoured New Arwar."
Mary amplified the Charm flowing from her amulet-shawl. That cleared the static of anxiety that his words set behind her breastbone. "Lady Von was right then to warn us not to speak of this to anyone."
She sat up and gazed wistfully at incandescent fumes of star exhaust silhouetting the curved rooftops of Saxar's affluent heights. "The Sisterhood of Witches and the Brotherhood of Wizards are determined once again to hide the truth of the Dark Shore."
"And for the best, I say. We were lucky to get away at all." Brick pulled her close to him again. "Do you miss Earth?"
She floated with him in a fullness of Charm and an emptiness of all discomfort. "Earth was a completely different lifetime—on a dim and sad world. I never much think about it. And when I do, I feel unhappy for everyone who must live and die there, on the Dark Shore."
"I just wish I could remember what Reece really looked like." Brick pinched the bridge of his nose. "I have this vague memory of a block of a man with a pugilist’s face. But I don't see his features." He shrugged and offered a soft laugh. "It's easier for me to remember him as Ripcat. Those are beastmarks I'll never forget!"
Charm helped their bad memories fade. As the years went by, Brick and Mary Felix would do less recollecting, for their lives had become abundant and would fill even more with their election to the Peerage and their expanding role as trading giants among the dominions of Irth.
Afterworld
In a higher world beyond World’s End, inside the silver corona of the Abiding Star, life went on simpler and happier yet. The pixies that had trespassed the lady's garden to look at her bathing her swollen belly in the garden's marble pool had been tricked by the dark father to descend into his consort's dream.
They had thought they would be trapped there forever and had acted ferociously to protect themselves—not realizing that the way out of that cold reality opened through the heat of the Abiding Star. When charmfire consumed them, they woke from the dream, once more in the twilit garden under drifts of golden leaves.
Against a tapestry of birdsong, splashings from the pool, and distant dulcimer music, they heard the dark father's laughter. Black and green butterflies scattered from flower beds where the returning exiles sat up, startled.
The pixies shared looks of amazement, jubilation, and fright, and they leaped to their feet, frantic to flee the twilit garden and the nightmare that had once devoured them.
Scores of pixies darted between the pillars, frightening horned lizards and doves from flower-laden trellises. Scores more pixies clasped their petal caps and twine-bound leaf britches and fled. They darted past blooms and fronds that dimmed beneath the slantwise shadows of enclosing night.
Beyond the garden's hedges, mauve horizons of twilight stretched into hay-dust fields and clover meadows. And the dear ones ran in their hundreds toward freedom!
Their laughing faces shone with thrilling lucidity. They knew their place now in the waking world, learned hard in a cruel trance—and they blazed with gratitude for this lesson and its hints of myth.
Laughter and song returned with them into the fields.
Overhead, evening's purple bleared into violet, fading toward ultratones of the invisible. And within the utter black of the abyss no stars glimmered, no moon glided, only shoreless depths of void—like the spiteful forgetfulness of a dream.
A. A. Attanasio
Thank you for traveling with me among the Dominions of Irth! I hope this fantasy on the Bright Shore carries some Charm for you and lightens, even a little, your reality on the Dark Shore.
Many readers sent comments about these three volumes and helped me shape this saga into a more vivid reading experience. I am grateful to everyone who wrote and for all that I’m learning about how text disappears into story. You really are the best friends and teachers a writer can have!
Reader reviews are crucial for any author to connect with a resonant readership. If you enjoyed our time together on the Bright Shore – or if you feel that other fantasy readers should be warned away, please leave a review on Amazon. Even if it’s just a sentence or two, your words answer mine. Appreciative or critical, your impression would be very much appreciated:
http://goo.gl/zljoEr
http://aaattanasio.com/
[email protected]
eBooks Available from A. A. Attanasio
(newly revised by the author)
Killing with the Edge of the Moon
Mama’s boy Chester Hubert drums up the courage to ask a witch’s granddaughter to the school dance—and finds himself hurtling through a modern, demonic fairy tale.
Quiet, elfin Flannery is not like other kids. She has caught the attention of the faerie, beautiful evil creatures from a mysterious Otherworld. They seduce their victims at midnight raves, then feed them to a dragon. For sport, they hunt souls with a black dog of prodigious evil. And they have taken Flannery for one of their own.
Thrust together in the Otherworld’s dark enchantment, Flannery and Chester discover they know each other better than they know their own hearts ... but can they sort things out before the black dog finds them?
And what was that about a dragon?
http://goo.gl/p4mEzc
The audiobook edition of Killing with the Edge of the Moon narrated by Destiny Landon and Lee James available at Audible.com.
http://goo.gl/VWhHKz
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Wyvern
A bold escapade with a young soul-catcher from Borneo kidnapped by pirates in 1609.
Headhunters, sorcerers, pirates and Indian princes thrive in this adventurous, poetic tale of a young outcast in Borneo. Born in 1609, son of a native woman and a Dutch sea captain he never knew, Jaki Gefjon grows up in the jungle as a sorcerer's apprentice. Later kidnapped by pirates, he befriends his captor, Trevor Pym, notorious for his dreaded man-of-war, Wyvern. The scientific marvels on the European privateer become the young soul-catcher’s passion—until he falls for Lucinda, the headstrong daughter of Pym's sworn enemy. Propelled by intrigue, pirates' battles, curses and visions, this seafaring saga takes Lucinda and Jaki from the South Seas to India—and to a bold, unforeseen destiny in the New World.
http://goo.gl/QZBxHo
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Hunting the Ghost Dancer
World Fantasy nominee.
50,000 years ago, three young friends band together for a perilous journey to find a new home after plague devastates their coastal tribe. Accompanied by a blind horse and armed with meager weapons and their own elusive courage, Hamr, Timov and Duru defy savage odds to survive in the strange and brutal realm of Ice Age Europe. This incredible quest takes them through primeval forests stalked by cave lions and across vast glacial moraines of thundering woolly rhinoceros—to the Thundertree clan. These forest people accept Duru, the girl, for her magical powers. But the two young men must prove themselves worthy by hunting down a giant Neanderthal—the last of his line—who has been terrorizing the tribe.
http://goo.gl/nNwOIy
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Servant of Birds
This historical romance, set in the 1190s during the rule of England's Richard the Lion Heart, exposes the raw experience of love: romantic, sexual and spiritual. The dramatic action moves from Wales througha tumultuous Europe unsettled by the Crusades to intensely colorful Palestine and back. Arrogant Guy Lanfranc assumes control of the family castle by sending his hated mother, the old baroness Ailena Valaise, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Wily Ailena vows revenge and finds the means in the person of Rachel
Tibbon, a Jewish girl who survived the butchery of her family and other Jews after Crusader losses. Ailena's plot to regain the castle built by her father propels Rachel into a perilous adventure of vengeance, faith—and true love set against impossible odds.
http://goo.gl/6Wpr2h
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Brave Tails
Summoned by a vengeful sorcerer snake, an army of malevolent boars has invaded the peaceful haven of Riversplash Mountain. Only a few humble friends from the swamp dare to believe they can prevent the invaders from ravaging their fertile mountain. Farmer mouse Thrym, wise hedgehog Muspul, a father-and-son team of shrews, and the beautiful mouse maiden Olweena dangerously assume the masked identities of the Brave Tails, legendary, sword-wielding heroes of yore who originally rid their land of predators. But these small defenders will need more than masks and swords to stop this brutal onslaught—and the magic they seek is even more dangerous than the boars!
http://goo.gl/u50QVd
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The Radix Tetrad
The volumes of this series can each be read independently of the others. The feature that unifies them is their individual adaptation of science fiction’s sub-genre: “space opera,” which the editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer define as "colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes."
Radix
Nebula Award Nominee
A saga of a young man's odyssey of self-discovery on an eerily alien Earth thirteen centuries in the future.
Rich in detail and filled with beings brought to life with intense energy, this strange and beautiful world reveals its secrets as Sumner Kagan changes from an adolescent outcast to a warrior with god-like powers. In the process, we accompany Sumner on an epic and transcendent journey.
http://goo.gl/BhoIss
The audiobook edition of Radix narrated by Sergei Burbank available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/ojf3qX
In Other Worlds
One star-chained evening in a Manhattan bathroom, Carl Schirmer, a sweet, slightly defeated bar manager, spontaneously transforms into energy and finds himself transported to the farthest extreme of the universe, 130 billion years in the future. Turned loose in time's last world, the strangest of all—the Werld—Carl discovers a domain of indescribably beautiful islands floating in a sky contoured by gravity lanes. These skyles are inhabited by the Foke, nomadic humans, who struggle for survival against the zōtl, a spidery intelligence that eats the pain of sentient beings. Among the Foke, Carl meets and wins the lovely Evoë, and their life together offers a blissful future in this kingdom that knows no aging or disease—until Evoë is captured by the zōtl. In order to save her life, Carl must return to Earth—130 billion years earlier—where he is shocked to discover that the world he has come back to is not the one he left...
A classic of quantum fiction.
http://goo.gl/FN37o9
The audiobook edition of In Other Worlds narrated by David Gilmore available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/Ds6CPw
Arc of the Dream
"A kaleidoscopic adventure, a potent piece of storytelling pulsing with menace, yet thoughtfully and gracefully rendered."—Roger Zelazny
"Arc of the Dream melds physics and metaphysics, adventure and speculation, intellectual entertainment and deeply felt emotion ... A step forward for a major writer."—Norman Spinrad
An alien from a higher dimension has fallen to Earth, trapped within a continuum too small to contain it. In its quest for freedom, this hyperspatial being touches a handful of lives: Filling a frail Asian man with unimaginable energy. Freeing a middle-aged American from the chains of time. Wrenching a lonely French girl out of the depths of madness. Opening a bitter young Hawaiian punk to hope and love. Together, they join in a visionary quest to save the Earth from destruction.
"A lovely book, full of poetry and wonder." —New York Daily News
http://goo.gl/cTqO2S
The Last Legends of Earth
“A wonderfully realized, richly-detailed and cohesive novel.” —People
“Few novels have ever had a broader scope … on a scale rarely seen in science fiction since the great works of Olaf Stapledon.”—The Denver Post
Seven billion years from now, long after the Sun has died and human life has become extinct, alien beings reconstruct homo sapiens from our fossilized DNA drifting as debris in deep space. We are reborn to serve as bait in a battle to the death between the Rimstalker, humankind's re-animator, and the zōtl, horrific creatures who feed vampire-like on the suffering of intelligent lifeforms.
Set in the artificial planetary system of Chalco-Doror, an enormous cosmic machine, The Last Legends of Earth is a love story, a gripping saga of struggle against alien control, and an examination of the machinery of creation and destruction.
The Last Legends of Earth is a magnificent, visionary epic of the far future.
http://goo.gl/h7fTqZ
The audiobook edition of The Last Legends of Earth narrated by David Gilmore available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/akxddK
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The Perilous Order of Camelot
Across this four book series, young King Arthur grows up with the help of Merlin in a world of supernatural powers set against him.
The Dragon and the Unicorn
A dragon’s dreamsong, a hunt for the unicorn’s horn, and the ceaseless wars of angels and demons begin this bold retelling of the Arthurian cycle. Here is magic. And dark romance. Here is Merlin’s most dangerous sorcery: the supernatural love story of Uther Pendragon and Ygrane queen of the Celts.
Old as the Big Bang, the demon Lailoken assumes human form in Roman Britain as Celts battle Saxons for mastery. The druid-queen he serves calls him Myrddin and sends him to find her true love—to fulfill for her people an ancient prophecy at the frontier of life and death.
Led by a unicorn and hunted by a dragon huge as the planet, Myrddin becomes Merlinus on his quest for the queen’s mate among her remorseless enemies, the Romans.
And finally as Merlin, he matches wits with gods and elves to unite Celtic queen and Roman warlord and weave the destiny of the most famous king.
http://goo.gl/1aoqTq
The Eagle and the Sword
The story of adolescent Arthor on his journey to Camelot and his destiny as King Arthur. When Merlin discovers that Arthor's only joy is killing, he vows to turn the belligerent youth around with a magical sword.
The story of teenage Arthor threads an immense, complex web of gods, demons, angels, a sorceress, a unicorn, a carpenter with a wish, a dragon, Saxon raiders, an impoverished Aquitanian lady with a secret weapon, battle-hardened Celtic chieftains and treacherous Roman nobles, knights, warring religions—and fairies.
http://goo.gl/zMwP3t
The audiobook edition of The Eagle and the Sword narrated by Thomas B. Hackett available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/q0mNjs
The Wolf and the Crown
Adolescent King Arthur's first year on the throne portrayed in chapters composed as 'flash fiction:' short, swift, emotionally percussive episodes, reflect the intensity of the boy king's struggle to consolidate power against brigands and invading pagan tribes.
Though he possesses the legendary sword Excalibur, the boy-king "Arthor" discovers that he must earn the respect of the warring lords of Britain before he can truly claim his place as their leader.
Gods old and new, ghosts, witches, demons, angels, vampires, dwarves, a monkey, elves, stolen and misplaced souls, the hell that is our present day, the fabulous world tree that is the magnetic field surrounding the Earth, the hollow hills above the dragon at the heart of the planet, heroic adventure, an
d selfless sacrifice, weave a tapestry of magic and enchanted historical realism.
http://goo.gl/m4ZtL2
The audiobook edition of The Wolf and the Crown narrated by Erin Jones available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/AfO6gW
The Serpent and the Grail
The narrator is Rna, a clan woman 90,000-years-old. She is eldest of the Nine Queens of Avalon. The place is Roman Britain, A.D. 491 on an alternate Earth, where Camelot is a monumental quantum gate to other worlds—
The boy-king Arthor has beaten back the berserker wolf warriors of the Saxon god, uniting his island kingdom—but at terrible cost. The Grail, the chalice of the Last Supper and the magical shield of Britain, has been stolen.
Without the Grail's protection, Britain lies parched and barren, a demon-haunted landscape. To find the Grail, Arthor's mother, Ygrane, must strike a dark bargain with Bright Night, elf-prince of the "pale people," in the hollow hills.
Merlin alone can show the way. But it is Arthor who must confront the Serpent, sword in hand, to fulfill the ancient blood rite of kings—and transform himself to King Arthur.
Octoberland (The Dominions of Irth Book 3) Page 30
