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Obsidian Sun by John Keys
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Cover
Artist: Paul Richmond
Differences must be put aside when vengeance becomes
all-consuming.
Anan, a spellweaver of the Talac people, returns from a hunting trip to find his village decimated, his mate dead, and everyone else captured by Varas slavers. The sole survivor is Terja, a young man without the velvet that covers most Talac, marking him as a spellspinner. Since Talac magic requires both a weaver and a spinner, Anan and Terja must move beyond their ingrained mistrust. All that remains is revenge and a desperate plan to rescue their tribesmen before they are sold to Varas pleasure houses. A goal Anan and Terja are willing to die for.
With the blessing of the Talac gods, they discover new and surprising ways to complement each other’s power. But as they race through terrain full of enemies and dangerous creatures to reach their people before they pass into Varas lands, they must take drastic steps to face the overwhelming odds against them. Understanding their connection might be their only hope.
Anan, a spellweaver of the Talac people, returns from a hunting trip to find his village decimated, his mate dead, and everyone else captured by Varas slavers. The sole survivor is Terja, a young man without the velvet that covers most Talac, marking him as a spellspinner. Since Talac magic requires both a weaver and a spinner, Anan and Terja must move beyond their ingrained mistrust. All that remains is revenge and a desperate plan to rescue their tribesmen before they are sold to Varas pleasure houses. A goal Anan and Terja are willing to die for.
With the blessing of the Talac gods, they discover new and surprising ways to complement each other’s power. But as they race through terrain full of enemies and dangerous creatures to reach their people before they pass into Varas lands, they must take drastic steps to face the overwhelming odds against them. Understanding their connection might be their only hope.
Pages or Words: 200 pages
Categories: Alternate universe, Fantasy
Excerpt:
ANAN
EASED into bow range. He’d been hunting for a fingercount of days and stalking
this daggerhorn since the early gray of predawn. He waited until the animal
turned away before rising to a crouch. The lethally armed grazer would feed him
and his mate for days. He brought his bow up slowly and drew the bowstring to
his cheek.
His
body convulsed with pain that felt as if he’d been stabbed with a red-hot iron
blade, and his arrow shot several lengths above his quarry, which disappeared
into the deep grass.
In the
next instant, Anan knew. His mating-bond with Silbre had snapped. Agony filled
him, sending him to his knees as the bow slipped from his numb hands. Gasping
for air, he dropped forward onto his hands as waves of loss and pain
overwhelmed him.
I have
to find Silbre. What happened? Our mating-bond can’t be broken.
Unwilling to believe the horrible truth, Anan had to find his mate.
He
staggered to his feet, looping the bow over his shoulder as he took the first
stumbling steps toward home. The surety of his pace came back to him, and he
gained speed until he was sprinting toward the clan’s encampment. Time became
irrelevant. He walked when his legs refused to run and ate when his body
demanded it.
Dusk
came on him stealthily, but he refused to stop. Silbre can’t be gone. We’ve
been together since our adult velvet. Anan’s chest tightened at the thought
of losing his mate. His mind swirled with fear, horror, and anger. If their
teachers hadn’t sent him on yet another hunting trip, maybe he could have saved
Silbre. No, he refused to believe he’d lost Silbre. There must be another
explanation. He pushed down the rush of emotions and focused on the run as
night deepened. With the rise of the moons, he picked up speed, desperate to
reach home.
Anan
neared the last of his endurance when he saw the familiar featherleaf trees
that lined the river bend where the Kuri clan spent its summers. He topped the
river embankment and dropped to his knees at the sight before him. Complete
devastation. The warm morning breeze carried the scent of death. The raucous
voices of carrion birds as they fought over bits of his clan reinforced his
horror.
He
struggled down the steep embankment to splash through the shallow river that
circled most of what had been the Kuri’s summer encampment. As he waded to
shore, he found the eyeless face of a childhood friend. Anan stumbled to one
side and emptied his stomach. He retched again and again as he surpassed the
limit of his emotional endurance until each twist of his stomach yielded
nothing.
Silbre!
Where’s Silbre? Anan renewed his headlong flight to find his
twining mate.
He ran
through the devastation, sending flocks of birds into the air. With each
heartbeat his desperation grew as he ran to their tent. He has to be alive.
I can’t survive without him. He rounded a pile of debris and found the
familiar woven pattern of their summer lodge. His world died. Entangled in the
remains, Silbre’s body bristled with a fingercount of crossbow quarrels. Varas
slavers. Those are their bolts. The iron heads and spiral fletching left no
doubt. But they had never come this far into Talac territory.
Anan
dropped to his knees and pulled Silbre tight against him. Anan’s breath rasped
between clenched teeth, his chest tight with grief as he rocked with his mate
in his arms. A freshet of tears rolled over the plush hair covering his face.
The dull drone from hordes of green burrowing flies and the cries of carrion
birds surrounded him. But grief paralyzed Anan.
His
sorrow merged with anger, and he screamed toward the implacable sky. “Why have
you let this happen? Why did you cut his threads so short?”
Anan
dropped his chin against his chest and sobbed. He rocked his mate slowly,
tracing the tips of his fingers along the swirls of a spellweaver created in
the short tan and brown hair covering Silbre’s face while he fought to ignore
the fatal wounds. Anan’s throat tightened as more tears rolled down his cheeks.
He lowered Silbre gently, as if he were sleeping.
The aftermath
of the attack must be dealt with. He had no choice. He steeled himself to the
carnage around him and struggled to understand. How did the Varas unravel
the protective web that surrounded the village? Especially those of the Kuri
clan, who have some of the most skilled spellweavers of the Talac people.
Even if they had broken the spell, a warning would have been felt, and people
would have boiled out like stingers from their nest. Something in the web of
Anan’s reality shifted as he wondered how the Varas were able to decimate a
Talac village.
Anan
called on his spell vision and tried to trace any threads, but they were gone.
If there were survivors, they were no longer connected to the village weaving.
He began moving in a haze of disbelief.
All the
people he’d grown up with were gone. Saritua who taught him his first weavings,
Trebea who knew the perfect day to harvest wood for bows that wouldn’t wrack in
the fall rains—gone. He’d never hear Poza talking with her imaginary friends as
she toddled from one rug to another pretending at grownup, or her wonder when
the spring gliders migrated across the savanna.
He’d
seen the carrion birds pecking the flesh from their lifeless bodies. The
horrors no longer registered, as his surroundings became part of an unending
cascade of atrocities. At some point he would break and mourn. But not now; he
was too numb, too overwhelmed. The bits of his being that weren’t focused on
what he had to accomplish in this moment hid in the corner of his mind,
gibbering in near madness. Silbre couldn’t come to the rescue this time. The
task fell on his shoulders. There was no one else.
Screaming
birds took off and revealed the burned arms of a spellspinner. With this final
revelation, the last warp threads of Anan’s reality snapped. All the Kuri
spinners would be dead. When spellspinners in battle ripped the matama from the
attackers, they condemned themselves to death. Akhir gave their attackers a
painful end, but the backlash left the spellspinners burned and dead. He moved
closer and saw the velvetless skin that marked them from birth as
spellspinners. But the curse, or gift, of akhir created the final separation
between the Talac spinners and weavers.
Anan’s
questionable skill at spellweaving didn’t matter any longer. Without a spinner,
there was no one to take the deathspinner eggs and harvest silk for the matama
threads he needed for his weavings. Only the spinners knew how to combine
matama with silk harvested from the most feared animals of the savanna. Without
spun threads, Anan’s years of training didn’t matter.
Lucid
thought came to an end with yet another gruesome discovery. His mind rebelled,
and the final threads of his former life broke one by one. He locked away his
emotions to sort through them when he could take the luxury.
Anan
recognized the end of his second day when the sun’s deep red orb rested on the
treetops, covering his world in the color of fresh blood. Darkness would come
soon and with it the possibility of larger predators. With the clan spell
webbing gone, nothing would keep them out.
He knew
his duty. He must gather the dead and perform the most sacred of weavings. He
would create the final unraveling ceremony for most of the village.
Anan
struggled to his feet and began his task. Taking Silbre first, he carried his
mate’s body to the center of the camp. He ran the back of his fingers over his
twining’s face, the cold ache of loss constricting around his chest until his
breath came in gasps and tears rolled down his cheeks again.
Hesitant
at first, Anan carried the remains of each member of his clan and laid them
side by side. Lastly he moved to the spellspinners’ tents. He understood their
importance in the clan, but their aloof manner and vanity over their birthmark
velvetless skin had been reason enough for him to avoid them in the past. But
his duty was to the village, and his personal disdain had no place. Following
the sense of duty hammered into him by his parents, he afforded the
spellspinners the same reverence as the other lost.
As he
moved toward the final dwelling, and its content, he couldn’t help but note the
remains of Varas attackers littering the encampment. Some resembled colorless
grubs, the sign of a spellspinner calling akhir. The pale Varas bodies also
meant there would be a burned spellspinner close by. Akhir extracted a horrible
toll. Only in the legends of First Spinner and First Weaver did anyone survive
calling akhir.
He
grabbed the wrists of a spinner and found the touch of bare skin against his
palms… odd. Anan had never touched a spinner before. There had never been a
reason to do so. They didn’t encourage contact. After steeling himself, he
squatted to gather the last of the bodies, when he heard a moan.
Anan
spun, knife in hand. When he realized the sound didn’t come from attacking
Varas, he sheathed his knife and waited, listening for signs of life. A few
heartbeats later another barely audible sound leaked from the wreckage. Anan
dug through a pile of tent cloth and found a storage cache. Another groan
drifted from inside the partially exposed opening, followed by rustling as if a
mouse ran across a stretched kuri-skin drum.
Anan
eased himself forward, peering into the opening. At first he could see nothing
but darkness, but then two brilliant blue eyes peered up at him.
He waited,
recognizing the color of a spellspinner’s eyes. How did this spinner
survive? Why did he hide? Compassion returned to Anan. Regardless of how
this spinner survived, he is also Talac.
“You
hurt?” Even to Anan’s own ears, his words sounded brittle and desolate of
emotion. He waited for a response, but when none came, he reached inside.
“Here.
Let me help.”
Smooth
skin slid under Anan’s palms, the first time he’d touched a living spinner.
Surprise raced through his system when he found the contact… pleasant. As he
helped the slender figure, he recognized this spinner, but not for a reason he
might have hoped. The spinner standing before him was the most reclusive. He
always avoided contact with any of the Talac who were normal. Who were
velveted.
He
studied Anan with the suspicion of a young night-hunter, complete with the
twitch of his nose. He took the offered hand and scrambled up the side of the
cache.
The
tension between them grew as their gazes locked. This isn’t about my
feelings for the spinners. I must perform the unraveling. He waited a
moment, took in a breath, and calmed himself.
“Can
you walk?”
The
spinner wiped a grimy arm over his forehead, leaving streaks of filth as he
tucked his dark hair behind his ears. An instant later he nodded silently.
“I’m
Anan.”
This
time the young man trembled. “Terja. I am a spinner.”
Anan’s
brow lifted. “Yes. I see you.” He considered asking the questions swirling
through his mind, but waited.
Terja
shuddered again and turned his head slowly. He seemed lost, but Anan granted
him time to adjust and waited until the spinner’s focus returned. “Where is
everyone?”
“Dead.
Or taken as Varas slaves. I found only a few bodies from Kuri our age.”
Terja’s
eye’s widened. “Slavers? The screams. I heard… it was….” He stared at Anan.
Anan
wondered if this spinner still functioned or if the trauma had overwhelmed
Terja. Regardless, he continued. “Varas slavers attacked the village. Everyone
is either dead or captured. I don’t know why the web didn’t sound an alert. The
herds are scattered. All the Talac clans are in jeopardy.”
“Our
kuri and herdweavers? Gone?” Terja’s voice broke at the news.
Anan
stared at him. The herds were the least of his concerns. The herdweavers had
either died fighting or were captured. But he knew they hadn’t deserted the
kuri. They took their role as guardians seriously. But he needed to finish his
task, and Terja acted too overwhelmed to help.
Though
he moved toward the nearest body, Anan couldn’t stop staring at Terja. The
irrelevant question wiped out the last of his restraint. “Why were you hiding?
The Varas attacked. Why’d you do nothing?”
Tears
flooded from Terja’s eyes. With his breath coming in gasps, he tried to
explain. “I tried. Had my staff. People dying. Father put me—” Terja broke into
inconsolable sobbing. Anan knew he would get no more information from the
spinner.
“At
nightfall we’re doing an unraveling for the dead. You’re helping.”
Terja
looked shaken, as if it had never occurred to him a spellweaver would address
him in that manner. He began to speak, but when Anan glared at him, Terja
pressed his lips tightly together.
Anan
motioned to the body of one of the older spinners, and Terja moved to stand at
its feet. He clamped his eyes shut as he groped for the ankles, shuddering when
the tips of his fingers made contact, and hesitated. Anan allowed him what time
he could, but before he had to jar him into motion, Terja clenched his teeth
and grabbed the dead man’s ankles.
He opened
his eyes and glared at Anan, but Anan was far past being affected by anything
so minor as the anger of a young spellspinner. With Terja’s help, the last
bodies were gathered. Exhausted mentally and physically, he still refused to
allow Terja to perform any of the ceremony.
“We
need to make a final check. It’s close to nightfall. I don’t want to leave—”
Anan stopped and swallowed hard to regain his control. “I want to be certain
we’ve taken care of everyone. We can go opposite directions and meet back here.
Hopefully, there’s nothing to find.”
Anan
waited for Terja’s nod, then started through the encampment. Hesitant at first,
he covered the area with speed and resolve. I don’t know how many more
victims I can deal with before my mind snaps like a weak warp thread. As he
worked through the smoldering remains, he began to think they’d recovered all
the bodies.
He
returned to the center of the encampment and found Terja hadn’t arrived. Anan
moved to locate the spinner. Close to the spinner’s lodges, Anan found him,
crumpled into the dust, holding the body of a small child.
His
heart cracked when Terja’s eyes met his, tears running down his red cheeks. He
held the broken body like a precious jewel, cradling the kit who was long past
the issues of this world. The spinner ran his fingers over the deep brown
velvet covering the kit’s face as if he were sleeping. He reached down to touch
Terja’s shoulder.
“He’s
gone, Terja. Add him to the ceremony so his strands can rejoin the others in
the Great Weaving.”
Past
reason now, Terja’s sobs echoed across the scene of desolation. The darkness
flowed over the pair, its edges seeming to ripple in response to Terja’s grief.
“You don’t understand!” he yelled, his face contorted with anger. “Akra and I
were friends. His father died when a longtooth pack attacked him. We broke fast
together each morning. Why would they kill a kit?”
Anan
hardened. “You know why. Akra was nothing more than an animal to them. They
don’t follow the teachings of First Twining, and we are nothing more than
mating slaves to feed their addiction.”
“Akra
was a sweet kit. Just a toddler.”
Anan
squeezed his shoulder. “Come. It’s time.”
He
forced Terja into motion. They came to the central area, and Terja turned to
Anan. “Clean him. Please. I know it will take some of the spinnings you have,
but please. I cannot stand to think he’s going to the Great Weaving like this.
He worried so much about how he looked.”
“Terja….”
“Please.
I’ll replace the spinning. The spell panels on your kilt are close to full. You
have enough matama to do this.” Terja turned ashen. “Please. This will be the
last thing I ask of you.”
Anan
sighed and ran his hand over the complex matama patterns stored on his kilt.
Although his state of exhaustion diminished his focus to the point where he had
to touch the threads. He deftly created the weaving in the air from the matama
stored in his kilt panels. Soon he had the simple weave completed. Once he did,
Anan struggled through the ritual steps drummed into him to release the spell
and clean the lifeless body. The small weaving dissipated, and Anan let his
vision slip away.
The kit
before them now could have been sleeping. Anan normally would have refused to
use a spellweaving on someone beyond its reach, but he admitted, if only to
himself, this final visage of the kit was much preferable to the blood- and
gore-splattered toddler that had lain before him a short time earlier. He
stared at the kit, then at Terja.
“It’s
time to do the unraveling.”
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About the author:
Jon Keys’s earliest memories
revolve around books. Either read to him or making up stories based on the
illustrations, these were places his active mind occupied. As he got older the
selection expanded beyond Mother Goose and Dr. Suess to the world of westerns,
science fiction and fantasy. His world filled with dragon riders, mind speaking
horses and comic book heroes in hot uniforms.
A voracious reader for half a
century, Jon recently began creating his own creations of fiction. The first
writing was his attempt at showing rural characters in a more sympathetic
light. Now he has moved into some of the writing he lost himself in for so many
years…fantasy. Jon has worked as a ranch hand, teacher, computer tech,
roughneck, designer, retail clerk, welder, artist, and, yes, pool boy; with
interests ranging from kayaking and hunting to drawing and cooking, he uses
this range of life experiences to create written works that draw the reader in
and wrap them in a good story.
Where to find the author:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jon.keys.773
Twitter: @Jon4Keys
Website: http://jonkeys.com/
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