THE WHIRLWIND IN THE THORN TREE
Book One of "The Outlaw King"
Genre: "Weird Western" / Fantasy. The legendary gunslingers of late author Ed Brigham's fantasy novels were supposed to be the stuff of fiction, but when his son Ross and two of Ed's fans stumble into the desolate parallel world of Destin, they discover a war for the very soul of the universe, waged by the immortal muses that once pledged to enrich it -- and a strange secret that might bring America itself into the mystery.
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Chapter One: The Betrayal
HE CREPT TOWARD THE house through cold blue beams, the wash of the moonlight dancing across the forest floor under his feet like a handful of silver coins. He was there to be the dealer of death, but he wasn’t loaded for bear; indeed, there was only one pistol in his gunbelt and only one bullet in it. Necessity may breed invention, but the lack of it is often the catalyst of bloodshed, and tonight was no exception.
It was a small house, a two-story half-timber cottage set back deep in the trees, up the hill from the main grounds. If you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t even realize it was there. A small wooden platform served as the front porch roof, accessible by a door that opened in the middle. Next to the front door was a small table, and on that table was a wooden game board. The man had never heard of the game before the house’s occupant had foisted it on him fifteen years ago, on one of their few meetings. The rules were labyrinthine and the pace was nerve-wracking; they would sometimes go days between moves, and it made him want to tear his own hair out. He strode up onto the front porch, careful to avoid the always-creaky second step, and tested the doorknob. It was locked. He was never one for picking locks. He went back out into the front yard and looked up at the widow’s-walk on the second story, sizing it up with a veteran eye. He rubbed his hands together and leaned on his knees, gauging and making mental calculations. With four quick steps, he ran at the house and stepped on one of the columns holding up the platform, launching himself up at the ledge; the vault produced a deep and hollow—but ultimately still stealthy—thud as he ricocheted upwards. It was a challenging jump, three meters at least. He caught the ledge with his fingertips and flexed his arms, kicking both feet up as he did so, and pulled himself onto the widow’s-walk. The railing became a ladder that he heaved himself up and over. The night was a living thing out here in the wilderness, a soul-painting crawling and crying with the dark paint of a thousand creatures. The man paused, squatting next to the door to avoid being seen, to make sure he hadn’t woken up the man inside. He listened to the frogsong and the fiddling of the insects, his heartbeat settling. Still water. A telescope bolted to the railing focused a speck of moonlight onto the boards. Satisfied he hadn’t been heard, he tried the door and found it unlocked. He eased it open, slipped inside, and pushed it against the jamb. He squatted there in the darkness of the bedroom as his eyes adjusted to the grainy, colorless environment. Some enormous sort of artwork dangled from the ceiling, a giant paper tube that coiled around the room once. If he hadn’t entered on his haunches, he would have ran right into it. The owner of the house lay asleep on the bed in the middle of the room, snoring softly. The intruder lingered in the shadows, watching him sleep. He didn’t think the fat bastard was faking it, but he knew better than to trust such a canny son of a bitch. He crouched there for a long time, twenty minutes maybe, long enough for the sleeper to get bored of pretending and look to see what was going on. Nope. He went on snoring, oblivious to his fate. The man stood up and drew his pistol from the leather jackass rig under his jacket; it was a well-polished seven-shot breaktop revolver, too big to qualify as a hidden piece. He was only wearing the jacket to muffle the holster’s tack. “I’m sorry,” the man murmured, and fired a slug into the back of Ed’s head. At first, he thought the round had vaporized the sleeping man; the instant the pistol had discharged, the muzzle-flash lighting up the room and icepicking his eardrums, Ed had vanished. He didn’t get up and run, he simply ceased to exist, and his assassin couldn’t understand what had happened. In a strange fit of pique, he had the bizarre notion that he’d popped Ed like a balloon. Ed was a big guy, almost three hundred pounds. Maybe all that flab was nothing but hot air. The killer stood there, the gun still pointed at the bed, trying to wrap his head around the results of his premeditated murder, when snow began to fall from the ceiling: great big goosedown flakes that waltzed to and fro as they fell, twirling in the air. Still bewildered, he looked up and opened his other hand, catching one of the flakes in his glove. It was a feather from the mattress. A tearing, a deafening pain whickered through his mind and he dropped the pistol on the duvet, sinking to his knees, his fists over his temples. Both ears were ringing and he felt like all the blood had drained out of his skull, leaving him wall-eyed and out of breath. The room centrifuged like a zoetrope. “Guhh,” he said, his forehead ground against the intricate carpet. His brainpan felt like it was being emptied and washed out. “Nnnnggghhh, ffffggg . . . leave me be, for the love of the gods. I’ve done your deed.” The voice in his head was corrupted by his resistance, but its message was still clear. MY SOLDIER. REIDLOS UOY YOU ARE NOT NOT NOT NOT FINISHSHSHSHSHED. The man floundered on the floor, his fingertips twitching, searching; he found the bedpost and hauled himself to his feet. His cheeks were cold; he touched them and realized that he was weeping. He picked up the smoking revolver and put it back in its holster, and sat down on the hope chest at the end of the bed to collect himself. “No,” he said. “I don’t want to do for you no more, devil.” |
His downcast eyes swept over the familiar shape at his feet. He leaned over and picked up the gunbelt that had been lying at the foot of the bedpost. It was empty of all but the rounds.
A cursory search uncovered the pistols lying on the nightstand, in easy reach of the bed. The man picked them up, put them in the gunbelt, and slung the gunbelt over his shoulder like a gentlemen’s jacket. It was an easy, jaunty look, but he felt sick to his stomach and not at all jaunty. On the way downstairs and out the front door, he paused at the typewriter sitting on the desk and typed a few meaningful words, then walked out onto the porch where he half-expected to see a squad of lawmen waiting to gun him down as he left the house. There was no one. A surge of grief and anger filled him up and burned away quickly, leaving only regret in its place, tempered by shame. Perhaps he only wanted there to be someone there to punish him for what he’d done. He raked the pieces from the game board in abject rage. * * * The sound of gunfire startled him awake, but instead of his bed, Ed found himself underwater. A dark and subtle landscape of undulating blue, red, and green materialized from the nothing-world that was his slumber. The cold water threatened to take his breath away. Ed pushed the slimy stones with his thick hamhock hands and rose against the water's surface, feeling it glass smooth and round over the top of his head. It seemed to happen in slow-motion; he couldn't get enough air into his burning chest, the water wouldn't stream out of his beard fast enough. It clung to his face like melting ice and blurred his eyes. He gazed, bewildered, at the dead fingers of the evening forest through a curtain of crystal. Then the water was gone and he fell away from it, collapsing on his back at the stream's edge as it coursed over his numbing feet. He sat up and barked a gout of water from his lungs, panting in ragged gasps, the pain sawing at his throat with every breath. In that clarity which is so common to the dying, he looked down and marveled with grim eyes at the little sores all over his naked shins, calves, and feet. The diabetes was eating his legs, but today, today was the last day he'd ever have to worry about it again. Out of the chilling rush of the autumn water, the bullet-hole howled anew and Ed fell back again onto his elbows, growling. "Get to the house," said the voice, echoing in his head, and he realized it was all he could hear. His head felt like it was wrapped in foam. As he had done so many times before, for so many years before, for so long to his benefit, Ed heeded the raspy words. He rolled onto his side and pushed himself up again, struggling to his feet. The world swam again, as if he were underwater once more, and dimmed, and he bent over and grasped his knees until he could regain his faculties. He took one step, then another staggering lurch, then stood a bit straighter and continued onto the house. It waited, lurking huge and fat in the forest, a rundown old white plantation house in the middle of ten thousand winter-stripped trees. He made it to the back door, and leaned against the splintery rail at the bottom of the stoop to muster up another round of fortitude. He snatched the door open and ordered himself inside. When he got into the kitchen, he heard someone tapping an impatient foot on the linoleum, but when he looked around in confusion he realized that what he was hearing was the sound of his blood dripping on the floor. The sight of it astounded him, made him reel again; he leaned on the island as he passed it, and started toward the living room. His shirt, already filthy and soaked through, began to greedily drink up the crimson leaking out of the shredded hole in his neck, spreading it across his chest and shoulder, letting it run down his coarse-haired back. He couldn't stand anymore. He went to his knees with a thunderous weight that made the dishes in the sink clatter, and fell over onto his side, causing the grill shelf inside the oven to buzz. Ed lay on his back in his own kitchen, his gray eyes staring up at the horrid popcorn ceiling and the overhead light that had stopped working when his boy was still in diapers. This isn't how it was supposed to go, the old man thought, and he could feel the life running out of him from second to second. This isn't how it was written. Silent feet approached him from a dark corner of the room and someone knelt over him. "Where is it? What did you do with it?" With what? Oh, I know what you want. Ed's mouth worked, but he couldn't get the words out of his throat. The world was falling away, he was dropping, dropping through a trapdoor into oblivion, looking up at his oldest friend's face as it dwindled to a point high above. He could hear the soft rustle of arrow-shafts in a quiver. I'm sorry, old friend. He'll find it. He'll do the right thing. "Where did you hide the key? I need to move the Pomerium Ianus before someone finds it!" Your turn, kid, thought Ed, as the world came to an end, narrowing to a bright point like an old television. Good luck. You're gonna need it. |
Interstitial Excerpts from Ed's Fantasy Series "The Fiddle and the Fire"
Taken from The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree
These excerpts appear between the chapters of the book and provide insight
to places, characters, and events referred to in the main plot.
to places, characters, and events referred to in the main plot.
Oriensligne burned around him as Pack lay in the dust by the well. He had managed to drag his father's heavy corpse away from the fire before it had spread too far, but by the time he'd returned to the house, it had engulfed his mother and sister. They were black, peeling-bubbling figures, withered phantoms, sleeping in the inferno.
His tears made tracks in the dirt on his face, landing on the glossy chrome of his father's antique pistol. Pack held it now, as he curled protectively around his father's body. He held the gun against his face and reveled in the smell of the oil and the familiar scent of his father's hand on the sandalwood grip. He pretended that the gun was the last surviving part of his father, and that it represented a place where he could never be hurt again, where nothing could ever be taken from him as long as he lived. He went there, now, the flames rippling across the polished, scrollworked surface. He went there and slept. He would never come back. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 1 "The Brine and the Bygone" Normand stumbled across the vast Emerald Desert, his mouth a puckered, dry pit full of sticky teeth and a leather tongue. The flaky, glittering dust-sand made an epic chore of breathing. It got into his eyes a dozen times and cut his whites, irritated him beyond belief. After an hour of trying to watch where he was going, he couldn't take it anymore. He closed his eyes, pulled his hat down over them, and walked blind. They had double-crossed him. The sons of bitches. They'd ran with the whole take and left him for the Kingsmen. He still couldn't believe he'd escaped with nary a scratch. It had been a nasty chase. He stepped on a rock the size of his head and stumbled, pitching headfirst down a steep slope of shifting green sand. When he finally rolled to a stop at the bottom, Normand rested for a moment, upside-down and exhausted, his feet pointed up the hill. The first thing he did was check his droplegs to see if his father's gun was still there. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 3 "The Rope and the Riddle" "Fe-fi-fo-fum," said the strange, gentle voice, echoing throughout the city. The god, or whatever it was, spoke at him from some place Normand could not see from where he lay under the metal carriage. The ground shook rhythmically as the god-giant came up the road, his armored hips and shoulders brushing the buildings around him. Pieces of masonry fell, knocked loose by his passing, and shattered on the ground. "You're not supposed to be here. This is a restricted area. Don't you know that? Can't you read the signs, silly-billy?" The gunslinger tipped open his remaining gun and checked the cylinder out of habit. He already knew there were no cartridges left. The god-giant stepped on one of the other carriages, crushing it flat and grinding it into the street. Two of the wheels came off and rolled away; the fuel inside squirted out of the reservoir. Normand could smell the fuel's stringent fumes. He had to find safety, and fast. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 7 (unfinished) "The Gunslinger and the Giant" Normand flinched as the huge sea-creature plucked Bennard Koila from the gunwales of the lifeboat. The man screeched like a scalded cat; the massive jaws closed over his torso and lifted him high into the air and left him there. He tumbled end over end for a long moment, then fell into the Saoshoma's open maw as it slammed shut like a gull snapping up a catch. Clayton opened fire with his pistols, but the rounds simply bounced off its impenetrable hide. "Die, you poxy motherfucker! Why won't you just die?!" —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 4 "The Truth and the Trial" Normand was sitting on his cot sipping cool water when three men came in and stood in front of his cell. They stared at him, assessing his sun-blistered face and red eyes, and his filthy clothes, tinted green by the mica sands. "May I help you, gentlemen?" is what he wanted to say, but his throat was a raw tube of parched meat and he was too sullen for pleasantries anyway. "I hear tell they gonna hang you in the morning," said the man in the middle. "I suppose so," said Normand. "I hear you and your boys have been knockin over coaches out on the border. That's why they gon' hang you." He put up his hands, giving them an awkward, supplicating half-smile. The men looked at each other, then back at him. The middle one addressed him again. "I also hear you're the wiliest, and most versed trapper out in the K-Set. Is that right? And you're the first Ainean to ever survive a siege from them whatcha-callit—Pasu-Abhasa fellas?" Normand's face slowly broke into a grin. "Ayuh." "Congratulations, asshole," said the middle-man. "You've just been drafted." —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 3 "The Rope and the Riddle" Normand looked up at the dark god's glass mask. Figures perched in the rafters, clothed in tattered shadows, their white faces fixed on him like a loft full of barn owls. Dozens of them, just waiting for him to make a move. "I solved your riddles, ghost," said the gunslinger. "Now call off your hounds." "We never shook on the deal," said the kindly voice from a grille in the front of Dulid Aeva's cell. Normand pulled something out of his jacket pocket. It was the stick of dynamite he'd taken off of Roger's corpse, with one of the rubber washers pushed onto the end. He walked over to the flat thing that Dulid Aeva had produced out of the machine earlier and dropped it into the hole in the middle. The washer kept it from falling through. He lit the fuse and stepped away. The tray tried to slide back into the wall with a whine of clockwork, but the dynamite was in the way. It tried several more times. "What are you doing?" asked the god. "What is that?" "Shake on that," said Normand, and he ran for the door, clamping his hat onto his head. With a choir of shrieking, the Wilders descended on him; he threw open the door and the room upended itself with a noise like a planet tearing itself in half. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 7 (unfinished) "The Gunslinger and the Giant" "Three," said Clayton, as the midwife bustled back into the other room. He turned to his companions, a broad smile spreading across his face. "My third boy! Walter and Oliver, and now a third! Can you believe it? Oh, by the Wolf, what am I going to name this one?" The scribe spoke up, adjusting his spectacles. "I have a book here I've been saving for this. I think it's got the perfect name." —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 6 "The Feared and the Free" One of the recruits was standing in front of the platoon when he came back to the company area, talking animatedly. Normand stood in the shadows under the risers and let him talk. "What does this man know of wilders and metal giants? He's nothing but a poke, from the nowheres," the young man was saying. "And a reformed outlaw, at that. A common criminal!" Another recruit was trying to get his attention. "What?" snapped the first. "E's back there, larkin in them shadoos. Best watch—" "What's your name, man?" asked Normand, strolling out of his hiding-place with his hands in the pockets of his dungarees. He spoke with geniality, opting not to come at him with the same barbed hostility as the officers. The recruit spun to face him, and stumbled over his words at first. "Rollins, serah, Clay Rollins. Clayton. That is, Trooper Clayton Rollins." "Well, Trooper Rollins, how would you like to be my porter and confidant for a while? You talk like quite the diplomat. You get to have a front-row seat for these things I know nothing of." —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 3 "The Rope and the Riddle" Normand chanced a fire. The smoke curled from the half-dead embers, mixing with the eternal fog that engulfed this cursed land. He looked around at the ruins surrounding him, a building that had once been sleek and utilitarian. Even in ancient disrepair, it was obvious that in its own time, the structure had been exponentially more advanced and comfortable than anything in Ain. He was beginning to understand just how long the Antargata k-Setra had been here, dying in this half-sunned netherworld. Whole civilizations had come and gone before he and everything he'd known had even been born. He curled up on the demolished sofa and tried to catch some sleep before continuing, but his thoughts were, as always, plagued with worry about the events taking place back home. He hoped he was not too late. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 7 (unfinished) "The Gunslinger and the Giant" It couldn't be helped; the No-Man had forced him to seek refuge in the strange cave. He could still hear the incredible thunder of it walking around on the street above, looking for him. Normand threw a sheet of metal out of the way and descended into the dark burrow. Someone had crafted a stairway, and even lined it with tile, like a bath-house. A sign on the wall in the Etudaen language told him where he was going, but he couldn't understand it. Several times he had to crawl on his belly or climb through junk to get past the wreckage, but once he was in the pit, he felt better. Safer. He took out the Etudaen device and depressed the button on the side, illuminating his surroundings with the weak lamplight. Roaches scattered from his presence, scuttling out of sight. He was in a large sort of atrium, and gates barred his progress. He climbed over them, hoisting his exhausted body through the wreckage, and picked his way down another flight of stairs until he found another unnatural cavern. At the foot of a tiled platform, an eldritch tunnel extended to the left and right. He went left. He lowered himself down onto the tunnel floor and found a set of railroad tracks! The familiar sight comforted him. An underground train! Incredible! —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 7 (unfinished) "The Gunslinger and the Giant" The darkness was rent by a disc of white light. Normand found himself standing in it, as if illuminated from above by a spotlight. "Heyo?" he called into the shadows, the taste of the Sacrament cloying on his dry tongue. "Anybody?" He realized that his voice was different; squeaky, small, thin. He looked down at his hands and saw the smooth, unmarked hands of a child. When his head rose again, he was standing in his childhood bedroom, draped in the gloom of midnight. He gripped his father's gun tight in the hand that had not been torn by the mountain cats. A figure lay in his bed, facing the wall. He approached it and when he touched it, Pack came awake in the bed himself, disoriented and displaced, still holding the pistol. Something had hit the roof. He smelled smoke. This time he would not let them take his family. Six bullets for six men. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 4 "The Truth and the Trial" |
As the boy trickled his way down the hillside, picking his way among the rocks, he saw a woman hanging laundry on a line. "Blessed be!" she wailed when she saw him. "Where have you been? I've been worried sick! I thought you'd fallen somewhere or got ate up by a wild dog."
"I was just nappin. I fell asleep waiting for the train to come in and I missed it," said the boy. He was wiping his eyes; he had obviously been crying. "Pah's not gonna be riled at me, is he?" "No, I spose not. I'll talk to him," she said, flicking a towel at him. "Get on in the house and get ready for dinner." "Yes'm." "Save my heart, I swear, I thought for sure you were dead, son. Don't scare me like that again!" —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 1 "The Brine and the Bygone" Pack leapt out of his chair at the lowing of the carnyx. "What's going on?" he asked. The mercenary dumped the rest of his soup into the fire, dousing the embers. He drew both of his revolvers and ordered Pack into the tent, where he crouched by the tent opening. The boy clawed handfuls of laundry out of the trunk at the back and climbed inside, pulling the lid down over his head. He pulled out his father's gun and folded himself up in the cramped box, trembling in fear, peering out through a thin slit. "It's Wilders," said the mercenary. Pack heard gunfire crackling out there, and a strange and horrifying hooting and snarling. "Stay quiet. We'll get through this." With that, the man ran outside into the chaos. Pack never saw him again. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 2 "The Cape and the Castle" Clayton thanked the girl and closed the door on her. She was winsome, he gave her that, but he dared not lay a hand on her; not even to help her out of a pit of snakes. The Grievers were nasty customers and would brook no transgressions on any of their number, no matter how slight. He crept over to the edge of the fire-lit platform and strained his eyes to see down the dark tunnel to the left and the right. The catacombs clattered with the distant echo of falling water, making it hard to get his bearings in the gloom. He sat down and felt with his toes, trying to find purchase, and slid until there was no hope of pulling himself back up. At the point of no return, his fingertips slipped and he fell into the water like a log, touching bottom and bobbing back up. The bitch was down here somewhere, he thought, as he clasped the airtight waterskin with his pistols inside. He would swim all night if that's what it took. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 5 "The Blade and the Bone" The men buried his father while he ate. He'd gone without food for so long he wasn't even hungry anymore; his ribs and distended belly made him look like a great big horrible frog in the afternoon sunlight. He choked and gagged; his stomach threatened to purge itself. The woman took hold of his wrist and said, "Slow down afore you get sick." Once he'd gotten one of the eggs down and had some water, a trapper came into the tent and knelt by the boy's cot. "Who did this?" asked the man, burning into his eyes with an intense gaze. Three months ago, Pack wouldn't have recognized that gaze, but he'd seen it in the broken mirror in the black shell of his house so many times it was like looking at himself now. "He called himself Tem Lucas," said Pack, and it seemed like an incantation as the words came out of his mouth. "He had a red bird tattooed across his eyes." As if summoned by magic, his hunger ripped into him like a wild animal and he picked up the drumstick and biscuit, taking a bite out of each. A bestial snarl came out of his guts. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 1 "The Brine and the Bygone" The size of the thing was dismaying in and of itself, inspiring despair and dread just by existing. The giant No-Man moved with a fluid gravity, stepping over the rampart of junk without even disturbing the crenellations, or the men standing on them. Pack's heart leapt in shocked fear when he realized just how woefully under-prepared Harwell's men had been, and how close he'd come to dying every time he'd perched on the wall after joining the Lord on his morning rounds. The boy ran, not hiding or fighting, but simply away from the commotion. He hoped that he could put enough landscape between himself and the thundering monster before either the sun went down and he couldn't see, or the thing chased him down and killed him. He pushed his way through a throng of people paralyzed by fear, and clambered up a ladder. When he got to the top, he paused just long enough to look back at the great silhouette looming over the village, and wonder if they ate people. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 2 "The Cape and the Castle" The boy snapped awake in the dead of night. Something had hit the roof. He sat there tangled in his dank bedclothes, listening for something else, anything, another noise to tell him it hadn't just been part of his dream. He'd been flying through the clouds over the countryside on the back of a winged creature whose face he could not see. Several minutes had passed and he was about to lie back down and try to drift off when he smelled acrid smoke. He got up on his knees and looked out the window. Six men stood in the cull pen. One of them was holding a liquor bottle with a rag stuffed in the neck; as the boy watched, he lit the rag with a match and lobbed the bottle high into the air. It struck the roof with a thump and rolled off with a thin rumble, sliding off into the woodpile by the window, where it broke and turned into a blinding fireball. "Pack!" shouted his father from somewhere in the farmhouse. The boy slid out of bed and moved across the room, but as he took hold of the doorhandle, he heard the rip of gunfire. A body hit the floor. Pack stood there, frozen with indecision, then turned and opened his closet. He threw himself inside and shut the door, then pried open the hatch in the back and slid into the crawlspace on his belly. He pulled the board back into place and dragged himself to the hole where the pump pipe rose out of the dirt. He wedged himself into the ditch by the ice-cold pipe and listened, lying on his side in a grimy puddle. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 1 "The Brine and the Bygone" Pack sat on the bench, his lanky ankles in chains, listening to the crowd in the stands upstairs. The boy sitting next to him, also shackled to the pole under the bench, leaned into him and muttered, "I bet you're glad you hid in that box now, aren't you? Now you know what they do to stowaways." A filthy-faced man came down the stairs into the ready-room and assessed them. He smelled like pickles. When he came to Pack, he paused to glare down his nose at the boy's tall, sinewy, raw-boned frame. "You look like a real fighter. What's your name, boy?" "Normand. Normand Kaliburn. My da called me Pack." "Well, Pack," said the slaver, "It's your lucky day. Welcome to Finback Fathoms. You get to take a whack at Cutty for a few rounds. I hope your da been feedin you good." —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 2 "The Cape and the Castle" As the boy and the gunslinger sat on the battlement watching the guards stroll back and forth, the sun settled on the horizon like a great golden egg. It glinted through the cords of great rusted-out ruins, a labyrinth of tumbledown spindles assembled to the east. The last vestige of the Etudaen. Pack hoped he'd never have to go back out into that alien wilderness ever again, but he knew one day he'd have to. He couldn't stay here forever. The old man sitting by his side looked up from the culipihha he was peeling. "No one ever accomplished anything by dreaming, ulpisuci," he said, handing him a piece of the sickly-sweet fruit. Pack looked down at it. It was an aging windfall, barely edible. Harwell was the master of his own kind of ruin, he thought, and slipped the browning sliver into his mouth. It didn't even crunch. Harwell squinted into the sunrise. "One day you got to wake up and go get that dream." —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 2 "The Cape and the Castle" Ardelia hammered the glowing steel rod into shape, the embers reflecting in the sweat on her brow. She could feel the heat against her bare arms, and even through her thick gloves. Her perfect sword existed wholly in her mind right now, but soon she would give it life. The Ancress would see to that. She would eat, sleep, and bathe right here in the Forge until the blade was completed. She looked up at the hooded Griever standing in the archway, her arms folded, unmoving, unspeaking. "So what's your name?" Ardelia asked. There was no answer. There never would be an answer, not until she had become one of them. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 5 "The Blade and the Bone" The two men walked around each other in lazy circles, their hands resting on their gunbutts. The Redbird stroked his lush gray beard and pulled the collar of his shirt loose. "It's been a long time comin, Pack boy," said Tem Lucas. His voice was a raspy whiskey buzzsaw. "It has," said Normand. "Why'd it take you so long?" asked the older man. "It ain't like I've been laid up all this time. I been movin and shakin too. I been watchin you. I know all about your exploits. You coulda come gunnin for me at any time." "Waiting. And watching." "Waitin for what?" Normand licked his lips. His fingertips traced the contours of the pistol in his hip holster with almost erotic grace. He was a coiled snake. "I never could settle on how I wanted to watch you die. And then after a while, it hit me like a bolt from the blue—I didn't want to watch you die so bad anymore." "Oh?" asked Lucas. "Why's that?" "I realized some time ago . . . I had become partial to the anticipation." Lucas smiled. It was a warm smile, but his eyes were dead and cold. "I see. You've become a hunter. Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to play with your food?" Normand simply stood there, crow's-feet in the corners of his tight eyes. The smile dropped like a hot potato. "Without the chase, you ain't nothin no more. You're a hollow hunter, Kaliburn. Full of vengeance and nothing else. Whoever ends this today, it don't matter. You'll die either way!" Lucas broke into uproarious laughter, giving Normand the half-second he needed to draw first. —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 7 (unfinished) "The Gunslinger and the Giant" |