If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH
FROM PAM UPHOFF: Sweeper (Chronicles of the Fall Book 22)
A novella in the Three part Alliance A science fantasy about house repairs and family.
A badly mentally damaged boy, living on the street. Sweeping sidewalks. Living on charity, scrounging and kicks.
Lord Volodya Ignorov, newly transferred into the Bureau of Intelligence in Nova Moskva inherits a rundown house, and a runaway servant. “Probably dead by now.”
FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: I’m the Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules A Galactic Empire But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone!: Volume 4
Imperial Princess Regnant Alice and her fiancé, Crown Prince Daniel of Xeros, and the plucky crew of the Imperial Space Yacht Aurora, with the assistance of the Goddess Eireala, have traveled tens of millions of light-years from the Milky Way Galaxy to mend a rift in space.
Once that’s fixed, they’ll head home – and Alice and Daniel will finally be wed!
But nothing ever goes according to plan . . . not even an Imperial wedding.
You’re all invited to the nuptials, regardless . . .
The fourth volume of the BBESP light novel!
FROM JULIE FROST: Smuggling Spaces
Beagles
And dragons
And bears
OH MY
Russell Fisk, the owner/operator of the interplanetary tramp freighter Inquisitive Tamandua, really hates transporting live cargo. But when money’s tight and jobs are hard to find, he’ll take what he can get.
Sometimes the client’s paperwork is iffy. Sometimes the live cargo is unpredictable. And sometimes the dead cargo is even more unpredictable.
Whether the meerkats are engaged in a blood feud, the graveyard is haunted, or the miniature multicolored glow-in-the-dark capybaras might spontaneously combust, Russ has one simple (ha) mission:
Getting his cargo and crew from Point A to Point B in one piece, while staying a step ahead of the feds.
FROM ROBERT MILLER: Sword of the Hopeful King
In a realm forged by ancient legends, twelve-year-old Eofor refuses to mourn his dragon-rider father—because the magical amulet at his chest still pulses with a living heartbeat.
Running to the mountains to find the father he knows still lives, Eofor discovers that his father was hunting rogue dragon riders allied with a monster from an age long past. Beneath the kingdom, something far older lurks, but so does the blade that will save the kingdom if Eofor can wield it.
One impossible rescue. One four-winged flight. One chance to claim the Sword of the Hopeful King… or watch the kingdom fall.
Sword of the Hopeful King — Where a child’s faith meets dragon fire and destiny takes wing.
FROM STEPHANIE OSBORN: Eclectic Osborn: The Many Worlds of Stephanie Osborn
Many of Stephanie Osborn’s avid readers have requested her short works be collected and put in print. It took some time for her to write enough to make it economically worthwhile, simply because she usually writes novels.
But the time has arrived! Eclectic Osborn is that collection. Between its covers, you will find fantasy, mystery, horror, satire, and more, many of which have never seen publication before this volume. Sate your appetite for great stories with this diverse plate of tales!
EDITED BY CHRIS KENNEDY: Anthromech
Fifteen new science fiction series. One shared principle: Humanity must never surrender the final choice to the machine.
Welcome to “Anthromech” where technology may serve, amplify, and even merge with humanity, but it must never rule it; these stories push back against the tired assumption that machines will inevitably inherit the future.
This isn’t your traditional anthology, though; it is a Simultaneous Series Launch, introducing fifteen new series in one explosive volume. Readers won’t just discover new worlds here; they’ll help decide which of them march forward into production as full series. Which ones will succeed? You make the call on which ones you want to see more of.
Even more unusual, over half the stories pair veteran, bestselling Chris Kennedy Publishing authors with newer writers, turning the book itself into an act of mentorship as well as an imagination of the future. So climb aboard “Anthromech;” after all, the machine is nothing without you!
With stories by:
S.W. Swoope II & Chris Kennedy
Craig Bell & Kevin Steverson
Richard Cartwright & William S. Frisbee, Jr.
Joseph Hower & William Alan Webb
Charli Cox & John E. Siers
Jay Burr & Mark Stallings
David Appleby & Robert E. Hampson
Abigail Jenkins & April Kelley Jones
M.D. Boncher
Russ Tilton
Michael LaVoice
C.A. Waldron
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.
On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.
FROM STEPHEN PALMER: Americans Abroad: A Novel of Western Europe’s Surrender to Islam
Americans Abroad takes the reader to London, Paris, Berlin, and beyond. The novel explores the seemingly peaceful Islamic invasion of Europe, the feckless responses of Western European politicians, the intolerance of those preaching tolerance, and the weaponization of accusations of Islamophobia and racism. Can Muslims co-exist with Western democracy? Do they even want to? Or is co-existence merely a steppingstone on the path to domination? Americans Abroad probes these issues and makes the case for Christianity in a fast-paced, entertaining read, mixing humor with thought-provoking questions of religion and culture.
Six Americans travel to Europe—two go for work, two for fun, and two for Christian ministry opportunities. As they travel about the Continent, they encounter each other, as well as the effects of Muslim mass migration. The Americans commit the politically incorrect sin of noticing the downsides to “cultural enrichment” from third-world immigrants.
Americans Abroad follows Stephen Palmer’s successful three-book Unlikely series. In his fourth novel, Stephen shifts focus from American politics to broader issues of Western culture and religion.
After a successful twenty-year legal career, Stephen Palmer retired from Big Law at age 46 to focus on writing, public speaking, and volunteer Christian ministry activities. Stephen and his wife, Jennifer, live in Starkville, Mississippi after thirty years in the Atlanta area.
FROM BRIAN HEMING: Monster Girl Evolution: Tournament of the Smart: An illustrated tournament battle litRPG
“AN ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT SATIRE” “a fun read and not to mention hilarious” “Peak fiction.””this is ironically genius level.”
After the Kingdom of Dumb was attacked across the dimensional barrier by the Empire of the Smart, Amy led her team to take the fight to the Empire, along the way levelling up and evolving into a Luminous Fount of Dumbness, alongside Mizuno’s evolution into a Techno-Mage Evolved Smart Girl, Misty’s into an Armored Evolved Horse Girl, and Sassy’s into a Hyperactive Omega Puppy Girl. After taking over a machine-controlled world of the Empire using Mizuno’s hacking powers, the girls entered the Tournament of the Smart, a team fighting tournament that will determine the next ruler of the Empire.
Now they must fight increasingly powerful opponents, giving every match their all as they seek the throne. But can the Empire of the Smart accept a Dumb ruler, or will shadowy forces succeed at rigging the tournament and crushing the girls and their hopes to make a place for dumbness in the universe?
32 illustrations, full color if your device supports it.
FROM DANIEL WILLARD: The Mobster’s Daughter
Danny couldn’t understand why he was so attracted to Carly, because they didn’t have a lot in common. Danny was quiet; Carly couldn’t stop talking. Danny loved science and math; Carly was terrified of them. Danny read science fiction; Carly read Harlequin romances. Danny’s favorite band was Pink Floyd; Carly had never heard of Pink Floyd.
It was only later that Danny found out that Carly’s father was a Mafia boss. That made things complicated, because Danny’s father was an FBI agent.The Mobster’s Daughter is a tale set in Youngstown, Ohio, a blue collar city of giant steel mills and back-room bookie joints, close-knit families and unsolved disappearances, church festivals and car bombs.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Catch That Thought
Skid Milliken has a problem. Rent’s due, clients are scarce, and he can’t afford to be picky when he’s on a space station a long way from Earth. So when a Chongu scientist walks into his office claiming she’s being pursued by an unseen cabal, he grabs the job.
Now Skid has a real problem. Someone’s chasing him, and is willing to kill. His scientist is carrying a deadly secret from a distant planet — and someone in her circle of students is a traitor, but no one knows who.
Can he sort out this tangled yarn of lies and half-truths before it kills him, even as an ancient enemy closes in?
A short story of the Chongu Empire.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: ADAPTABLE.
According To Hoyt 
Remember, o Readers, that you can be FORCE MULTIPLIERS!
When you read books, you can rate and review them.
Even short reviews are of aid to the writer, because sheer mass helps. (And if you really can’t review, still rate.)
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I imagine it’s an illustration thing, but the trope of future long arms being yet bulkier and blockier just bugs me. It is fair to note the Brown Bess musket was quite slim compared to an M4, though much much longer, but extrapolating from that long-and-slim to shorter and blockier misses various steps where bigger and thicker was replaced by thinner and lighter. So it bugs me.
Thank you for attending my Ted talk.
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I suppose the progression in mind is no longer propellant-based but energy, as from batteries. Such energy storage devices do tend to have compact, blocky shapes.
II don’t recall – has anyone written future personal weapons with an atomic fission/fusion power source? There would be some problems with that …
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I seem to recall that Star Fleet hand phasers were powered off of a dilithium crystal; if you needed to, you could induce your very own warp core breach and use it as a grenade. 8-)
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It’s a fair tech extrapolation to assert energy storage density improvements by the 23rd century would make phaser power packs a micronuke scale explosive equivalent if that energy were to be overload-released all at once.
Saying “energy storage density will make devices not depend on some arbitrary ‘battery’ volume” and then working out what would drive weapons design instead is the type of thought I expect from hard science fiction.
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Thermonuclear Plasma Pulse Rifle: compress and heat hydrogen, generate a micro-fusion explosion, shoot plasma bolt at the enemy. Recover ignition energy from the fusion plasma. Depending on how much hydrogen is injected into the reaction chamber, yield is anything from a few kilograms high-explosive equivalent up to a few kilotons.
Larger plasma cannons installed in vehicles or ships, or carried by battle mechs, can deliver 100 kilotons or more per shot.
Requires force shield technology, both to make it work and to protect users from catastrophic backblast effects.
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It’s not a mistake in extrapolation, but a concession to what audiences expect.
Consider 1930s science fiction movie serials. Characters are in an airship, and have to bail out, saving as much equipment as they can. The Superfloofer Device is small and portable, because the audience doesn’t have any experience of Superfloofer Devices. The AmpMat Beamer Doohickey, likewise. But the radio? Big bulky heavy cabinet. Not because the makers expected radios to be that way in the future, but because audiences knew what a radio was, and it was a big, bulky, heavy cabinet.
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Well, this was specifically triggered by the long arm on the Anthromech cover above, which looks to be as big around as the young lady’s thigh. Compared to an AK-74 or M4, that’s just honking huge.
Noting the color choices as well, I expect the cover artist on this cover would tell me anything that is desired to be seen has to be large and contrasty enough that it shows upon a phone screen sized viewing platform, let alone in thumbnail.
But these honking blocky design school things show up other places too, like various video games. Maybe I am just so ancient that I expect futurey arms designs to be more informed by the Steyr AUG than the failed ultrachunky XM25 combo-rifle-plus-smart-grenade-launcher (see https://www.twz.com/land/new-northrop-colt-25mm-grenade-launcher-builds-on-lessons-from-failed-xm25-punisher )
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correction- XMwt was just smart grenades. ISTR a combo at one point, but the XM25 serves to illustrate uberblocky and overchunky for my complaint.
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XM25, not XMwt.
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Note it’s a nice cover – I am not besmirching it, nor the artist. And I can accept it-has-to-be-white-and-orange reasons. It’s the size and blocky shape trope.
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Certainly, I’m just noting that there are other explanations than poor foresight. “Bigger is cooler” was an esthetic in 1990s comics, too, as exemplified by Rob Liefeld’s art, among many. Given longtime trends in American comic book esthetics, as well as Liefeld’s meager skills (virtually everybody who drew “like” him was a better draftsman, he was just the star of the moment), consideration of real-world trends or future technological possibilities likely never entered into it.
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‘Consider a spherical cow …’
‘OK, but how do we get calves?’
‘Obviously, we must adapt a bull.’
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Somehow I doubt that a spherical cow and a spherical bull could accomplish anything useful, unless you believe bouncing bovine billiard balls off each other is a worthy objective. 🤣
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That might be entertaining for a viewer – can’t speak for the bull and cows – but my expected adaptation was for a concavity of an appropriate radius to match cows. Consider, perhaps, a ‘fully armed and operational Death Bull’.
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Master Diggory stood there.
For a moment, she could not breathe. Then, she nodded. “Of course, they would not welcome you to the dance, either. Do you remember dances before? I was barely old enough for my father’s.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I went to it when a small child.”
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“What’s her story?”
“She has the power to adapt to any situation/opponent.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“Yes, but she found herself facing too many opponents and couldn’t adapt to facing all of them.”
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That evening, we got into a huge debate about whether an Azhaghat worker should even be considered intelligent. One of the key elements of intelligence is behavioral adaptability — and the worker and soldier castes were to all evidence lacking in those things.
And then Mwrann pointed out that Azhaghat are not only a hive species, but are also hive minds. The individual elements of a colony are all interconnected at a quantum level, their brains functioning as cells in a mega-brain. Isolate a single worker or soldier and you effectively have a single brain cell suspended in a life-support medium. At the colony level, they have proven terrifyingly adaptable on the field of battle.
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Off topic, but Happy Flag Day! We premiered the new flag we bought to celebrate the 250th today.
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“Ringard, what are you doing up at this hour? You have a necromancy exam in the morning.”
“Sorry, Mother. Father read to me from an ancient tome this evening, and it inspired me. I simply had to see if it were possible.”
“Not at half past the witching hour. Back to bed, young halfling.”
“No! I simply must determine if a sheep’s bladder is adaptable to earthquake prevention.”
‘Baaaaaaa’
“Ringard, take that ewe back to the paddock this instant!”
“But, Mother …”
“I said no! I will not have an ovine dissection in my house. I’ve only yesterday finished scrubbing the walls. Do it now, then quench that candle and get to bed. Do you think tallow grows on trees? Your father slaves away at the wand factory to put a roof over your head and food in your belly.”
“You’re going to be sorry once I’ve proven the Earth to be banana-shaped!”
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Since someone beat me to my first idea…
“Do you think I can ever become an archmage?”
“Possibly, though it takes a lifetime of work and longer than most humans have. But you can certainly learn the basics of magic.”
“So, that’s a yes?”
“Of a sort. Whether you can be a master is still an open question, but you definitely are adept-able.”
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His fingers stroked the outer armor shell of the combat shell. “Adaptable polyalloy,” Sarah noted. “Currently set for maximum thermal energy dissipation, but it can also be set to absorb radar signals and kinetic energy dissipation.”
“Feels soft,” Jake noted, curious. “Almost like silk.”
“Oddly enough,” Sarah agreed, “Silk is good for that kind of thing. The more things change, the more things stay the same.”
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There had been no announcement, but the principal had been replaced again. The third one this year, Julian noted. Most things wouldn’t change, but some might, at the margins. Behavior the previous principal liked might be anathema now, while forbidden things were now required. Adaptability was the key to success.
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Julian was curious about one thing: The Changing of the Guard. When one principal departed, that principal’s favored students would suddenly find themselves without a sponsor, without support. When that happened, new students might take their places. It certainly required one to sense shifts in the social or political winds.
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(Lays out net to catch incoming carp and gets ready for a fish fry)
“So, we needed a new table for the conference room. And you ordered it from IKEA?”
“Yes.”
“And did you have them ship it to the office?”
“No, they would have charged an extra $250 for that. I had them ship it to our warehouse, we can move it from there for a lot less than $250.”
“So you ordered it Delivered At Place?”
“Yes, I ordered a DAP table.”
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“So, we needed a new Digital Audio Processor. And you decided to get one that stands on its own four legs, rather than one that sits on a different surface?”
“Yes, I always wanted to own a DAP table.”
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“So, your thesis is on the political parties of Malaysia between 1980 and 2020?”
“Yes, and I’ve got all their members arranged in a spreadsheet, with dates when they joined and dates when they left or died, if applicable.”
“So which one is this table over here?”
“Oh, that’s the Democratic Action Party. It’s really fascinating; they—”
“So, it’s a DAP table?”
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“So, what’s this bucket just labeled DAP?”
“Oh, that’s plastic wood filler, it a latex product for filling in cracks in wood.”
“But why is it labeled DAP?”
“That’s the manufacturer’s name. Used to stand for Dicks-Armstrong-Pontius, the names of the owners after the 1957 merger.”
“I can see why they shortened the name. So that’s what you’ve been using to restore this table?”
“Yeah, it had so many gouges in it, it’s probably got more DAP than wood on the surface by this point.”
“So you’re saying it’s no longer a wooden table, now it’s a DAP table?”
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“I’ve been restoring our collection of wooden carvings of Shakesperean characters.
This one from Romeo and Juliet is particularly bad, and I’ve had to build it back up with plastic wood.”
“Say, isn’t that the Prince of Cats?”
“Indeed – but for the moment, it’s a DAP Tybalt.”
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“I’ve also been working on our much smaller collection of Star Trek memorabilia; we used to have thousands of these little guys, but the fuzz fell off and we disposed of them. Had to build this one up, too.”
“You don’t mean …”
“Yes, it’s a DAP tribble.”
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That going to be quite fish fry.
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(Holds two carp up in the form of a cross …)
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(Part 1/4)
For some reason I didn’t truly understand, I’d stayed up very late doing the last engravings on the blade — in what would later be called runes of the Elder Futhark, though those letters weren’t quite yet in their final form. By the time it was finished, seen just clearly enough in the almost steady lamplight, I was full ready to go gratefully to bed. Trying not to think about the varied impressions I’d been getting all along about this very particular blade, as contradictory as any I had yet received.
A blade for a king, who was not a king; not to be used in battle but still somehow to be used to re-unite the Norse nations. Who had been, would have been, invaded and occupied by swarthy incomers from the south; though ones who had not ever established a kingdom or even a rule of their own. Abused their women, disheartened their men, diminished their realm. In a time yet so far off; a blade to fall stealthily down through time to meet its need.
I was almost used to that; though I’d long ago figured I’d never really be used to the strangeness that any intrusion of Fate, orlog as they called it here and now, made into my life. Or lives, if you really wanted to be picky. I looked out the window of my little house and workshop, saw the rising half-moon. Dearest heavens, midnight already.
“Elli! Are you awake? I see your light, did you fall asleep? You have to wake up!” Sigrida’s voice, low, but driven and urgent. And very strange.
I unlatched and opened the door, and Sigrida — my apprentice and sort of noble patroness all-in-one — practically tumbled inside. “Hrothgar! He’s gone half-mad with that, well, jealousy and despite he has for people like you. And he’s coming, here, tonight! Maybe to kill you, surely to hurt you badly. Him and a whole bunch of his friends.”
I smiled, thinly and maybe a little bitterly. “His sort of man really does not have true friends. Henchmen, hangers-on, gangsters maybe. Followers, a load of those. Friends? He’s far too selfish to allow such as those near.”
“Elli! I mean this, I hate to say it, but you have to run! I have a cart here, and you can ride with me, I’ll help you grab a few things and go.”
And I was silent a moment, turning inward to ask what the far-off turn of the third millennium would call simply intuition. And saw… a very clear end to one more of my lives, if not to one more of my returns. I smiled.
“Didn’t expect this so soon, but… yes, I think you’re right. You’ll have to carry on here without me. You know so much more than you think, already even now, Sigrida. About bladesmithing and about life.” My mind running in well-worn channels, already figuring what I could take and what I’d have to leave behind — my ‘go bag’ (as they’d call it a score of centuries in my future) packed some weeks ago. Only now Sigrida was looking at me real, real funny.
“I thought… it’d be hard to get you to leave!” Stunned.
I smiled, not grimly but more than a little wryly. “Given my calling, it’s part of the whole.” I shrugged, still feeling that old twisted smile on my face. Feeling decades, winding up, not to naught but still yet to… an ending.
Now she just looked confused. “Wait, bladesmiths often have to run away?”
And I’d started gathering up my most important smallest things, everyday things I’d been using. Mostly my tools, but not only those. “I didn’t say my profession, Sigrida, I said my calling. The reason-why I do all this. Many people want nothing more out of life than the superficial, the happy this and the pleasant, profitable that. Some of us want more, and some of that last bunch… even get their wish. A life of service, to the gods, to the Fates as they show themselves to us, to the long, long uphill slog in mud and snow that is the overall journey of Man. Maybe even to gods and goddesses yet unborn, and to faiths as yet undreamed.” Such had happened.
Though the snow had come far less strong and more miserly, these past ten thousand winters or so. And I had yet to meet that winsome young Jewish carpenter and jackleg preacher, from a near-nowhere town called Nazareth. Whose fate was… incandescent, so far beyond anything I’d ever conceived before.
But I would be Miriam then; not Elli, called after a deceptively-named one Thor encountered in one of his legend-trips. Weight of age, personified…
“You have to be… adaptable, to do that. To be that. To… be held in the hand of Fate, as a tool, and used to serve its ends.” Or of hers, Erda’s. “What being that means, practically, is how your life can turn, so fast.”
And young Sigrida was looking at me, still. Only, now, really looking at me. As a seeress, a volva as they called it here, would do. A long time back I’d realized she had the talent. Now, tonight, she had a reason.
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(Part 2/4)
“Elli, I really can… carry on, what you do. Only, I’d have to stay here, be here when Hrothgar and his people arrive. And that scares me.” Pensive was the word, or would be, for what was in her voice. And also, that very familiar feeling, at least to me, of one’s world being torn apart and then rearranged, into some different and only perhaps better pattern, suddenly.
“Your people will need the skills you and Wulfgar have been learning, that I have been practicing here and teaching. Your Norse need the cunning iron blades for what they need to do, to be who they need to be, next.” Fate is what that is; and you have to speak Fate to a volva, even one in training.
“And Wulfgar is very strong and deft, which is not an easy blend. But you see things he does not — you remember what I showed you, about that color of yellow that iron has, when it changes, when its nature shifts and lets you do things you can’t do, otherwise?” (So very long after this, they’d call that a BCC/FCC transition; for now, it was more like smithly magic.)
And she looked at me, still more appraisingly. “Your Norse? I though you were one of us, Elli. How is that not ‘our Norse’ instead?” Not with any hostility or suspicion or rancor, but still a… deep intensity to it.
How fast they do grow up; even all a-sudden, some of ’em sometimes.
“I am beholden to more and further beyond, Sigrida. It’s a wider horizon than you’ve been given to see. But yet, I have indeed been one of you, I truly in many ways still am. As long as you, and Hrothgar, let me stay.”
She shook her head, decisively. “He won’t, he’s out for blood and he will have it. Your blood by preference. Nothing you did, nothing you didn’t do; he’s simply… run out of thread, on that seam.” And now, her true native innersightedness ran clear and strong through Sigrida Gunnarsdottir. Just as fast as that. (Which was good, given what she’d said and I knew we both were about to face; even if that facing was done through simple running.)
I smiled, now only a little wryly, at her in the almost-steady lamplight. (She would need those good lamps, here, more than I would on my way. Later elsewhere, I could make more; I’d been practicing it a very long time. Not much call for fire-ripened flint points, anymore, or antler daggers either one; but the clever hand keeps quite a long memory.) “He’s not the sort of man to endlessly tolerate those he cannot control, cannot turn like an ox or a horse, Sigrida. My time has come now, yours will too if you stay in his firelight long enough. Or perhaps…” Something had struck me, that I would have had to either take along or pass to Sigrida, but perhaps not.
“Yes..?”
“Help me pull the mount for the anvil.” She frowned, silently but mightily, then said, “We cannot flee burdened so and my little cart might not bear it.”
And I smiled back at her, like a fox. “We’ll set this old log back in its place when we’re done. What’s under it will travel well enough. Or not.”
The oak stump-log underneath was smoothed, but massive. I didn’t let her see how much of the combined weight I took, or give her time to feel its true heft. When one of my lives ends, even though I need not heal into a different personhood — a fair bit of energy tends to be freed. As I did, familiarly, I felt the vibrations ride the spiderweb of specific Fate. Of one man in particular, and his two stern, staunch, proud brothers…
“Dig around a little in the bottom of the hole, the sides should be well enough packed by now not to fall in. You’ll find a little box, as big as both of your hands together.”
“What treasures hide within, Elli?” She held it up, dark with mild age. A score of years, only, too brief to more than discolor the wood. I took it from her and used my palms to work the panels, and the lid came off. There was a wool-wrapped knife, of thoroughly-forged sky-iron, and a…
“Elli! That’s,” and her voice dropped to a choked whisper, “real gold! It looks as if it could be the Dripper himself!” Draupnir, arm-ring of the One-Eyed, that regularly dripped multiple (mundane) likenesses of itself.
“No, Sigrida, it’s only a fine-made piece of jewelry, fit for a king. Or,” and I smiled a winter-wolf’s smile, reading and writing its fate with my two hands as I had scarcely done since the Great Winter itself, “fit for a trio of would-be kings to bicker over to their doom.” Now, I understood at last why I’d made it, thirty-six winters ago… or was it thirty-seven?
Hrothgar in his wrath was so, so sure the time had come to extinguish the life of Elli here — with or without literally killing her. But if one was willing to make the proper sacrifices… what blew out one life could just as easily blow out more, as the wind shifted about the guttering candle.
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(Part 3/4)
(Heavens, how I hated having and taking Fate in my hands, far harder than handling shattered glass, and more likely to cut you; but I knew how.) And I swallowed hard. “But for that, I have to give this to you, and you have to wear it, openly, for when Hrothgar comes. And when he rips it off your arm you have to protest and resist and be knocked about for it. Maybe even lose a tooth or three. But… the rush of one thing making another will be set fast and sure, by then, by that, like a fishing-hook, and…”
“One bit of snow tumbles another, till an avalanche roars wild and free.” We were by the seaside, far from any mountains, yet we both had seen. The near-steady lamplight betrayed the tear in the corner of her eye. Steady she looked at me, otherwise. Steady, like a hale medicine-woman long ago.
She had that sound in her voice, already. The true seeress, fully in the grip of her gift, Speaking truth. She Saw it just as I did, now. Saw how sure; Saw how painful he would make it for her, in his petulance. Sigrida would not only inherit most of my shop, she’d inherit his wrath.
But the first would last, and the second would not. Her line, her family, would come to the fore as the likeliest candidate for the people’s trust. Indeed, about half and half, Sigrida Gunnarsdottir might actually become a queen — not as they would count it so many generations on; ‘merely’ queen of a district, or a dukedom, or whatever. But still, here-and-now, royal.
People like me simply don’t get to be royal; it cannot work. I like that.
“I’d serve you if I could, Elli, but I can see it cannot be, now; our path is too different from here on. But I could… promise you a favor.” There was a deep, deep desire, almost a need, in her look; not a hard refusal to be obligated, but an imperative to give value for value given, somehow.
“That is a very open-ended thing, Sigrida.” I felt its weight, like hills.
“Good, then it’s settled. If ever you need anything from me, any thing I can rightly give, from me or any of my daughters or any of theirs, then it will be yours. This I swear by the Three Ladies of the Well, by the Fates we both recognize.” And I almost shuddered, that was a mighty oath indeed.
“I can show you a rune,” I said, slowly, knowing this was a gift already mine now, and one that I could not diminish or return without offense. “A bindrune, a few run together, that will serve as a sign to you later.” It wasn’t entirely impossible she might not recognize me; her daughters would have no direct memory at all. Wordlessly, I stooped and drew in the dust.
She took off the several-stranded necklace she usually wore, three pieces of pierced Baltic amber on leather cords. Started untying the knots that held them together. “This might serve us for a sign, too.” Pulled one free of the rest, re-strung it on one of the cords, held it out to me.
“They call it Freyja’s tears.”
I took the one-holed bit of amber, looped its leather string over my neck, felt what it meant that I did. “Yes, falling on the sea they turn amber, falling on the land they turn gold.” It was a lovely thought, grief remade into lasting beauty and value; sometimes even truly the way of this world.
“But now that I’ve given you that, I’ll ask you to give me something. That calling of yours, those Fates you serve, whether they’re Erda and Verdandi and Skuld or… some other, more-foreign ones. What is the end they seek?”
And now it was my turn to draw in breath, suddenly. For now I felt how she ought to hear, what I had heard all those years ago, through the voice of the Winter Lady, Whom these Her people were learning to call Freyja (the Lady). Volva to volva, now, one dagger in the sure hands of Fate to another.
For all the Fates are one Fate, and all Mankind one people, with one fate all together… and there were tears in my eyes now, too. I had to blink mine away, as I led her the few feet out my door underneath the wide sky.
“You can’t understand, you won’t understand. Neither do I; but neither of us has to — all we have to do is follow the instructions, do the work.”
I pointed up, seeing clearly now. “‘Help us take them to the stars, these men and women of yours. They ought to take their place among them, not as legends but as ordinary people. They have a Fate to fulfill, there; and already their destiny awaits them.'”
And in the third-quarter moonlight I saw Sigrida’s eyes widen. “That can’t be true, can it? Could people actually live among the stars, farm the sky? That’s more than I know how to believe, or ever to understand.”
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(Part 4/4)
I smiled, a sad sort of smile learned so long ago. “Adaptable, Sigrida; it cannot be helped. If you’d tread this path, any distance at all, you must be that, adaptable, and keep on at it, and become ever more practiced.”
And she looked at me, grown-up yet another step in a heartbeat. She might as well have been a queen and a volva, not just a sort-of-princess and new minted, barely-trained seer. “I have sworn to serve you and those who come after you, Elli, and this I will do, I and all my line to come. And if we are to become people of the stars, somehow, to do it… then, we will.”
She smiled, almost shyly. “And that will serve as a proof all in itself.”
And now I knew something else. “This dagger is made of iron that fell to us from the sky; the man who found it, saw it fall. Never mind how I know, this really happened. It does not rust, it keeps its edge. And someday it may fall to your descendants to… take it back to the sky. However done.”
And I Saw, dimly, a woman in strange garb, like furs fitted to her body. A walk like the central walk of a galley, between the rowing benches, under her feet. And on either side of that, openings to starry night, and seats before strange rainbow-glittering tables. Incomprehensible, in a way I’d so long known; and likely (to my chagrin) to remain so for very long indeed.
But this dagger rode on her hip, there, in a leather sheath. Where, with a short age’s worth of further insight, I can now recognize a ship’s bridge.
“Bury this and the king’s blade outside, or let us do it together, now.”
She had that look again. “Let me; or, we can start together, so you know where they are, in case Hrothgar kills me. He’ll not have these.”
I did not protest, though I was certain as the feel of the sand under my feet that she would survive this night, and far beyond Hrothgar the Bold too.
We buried the blades, well-wrapped, by a certain rock. We loaded the cart with what, portable-enough, remained of Elli the Bladesmith’s life here.
And I watched Sigrida draw a bindrune in the sand, and erase it with her foot, and show me a ring of gold on her arm, unfated for her to keep. I said, only, “Be blessed and deftly guided.” And tossed the reins and said the words, and her team of two moved off, knowing their way this early on.
No more farewell was needed. Fate was an ocean we two swam in, henceforth.
I looked up at the stars bright in the sky despite the lifting moon; and I Saw in a brief little flash a novel thing I never could have expected.
I saw me, in a cart like and unlike this, drawn by two horses. But it was day and not night, and in the sky were not one but two suns, a bright big one like ours, and a smaller, dimmer one like a candle next to sunlight.
And I knew the stars in our sky were suns, like and unlike ours. That the Wanderers in our night were worlds, like and unlike ours. And that among those stars there was much, much, much more room than ever I’d conceived possible.
For me, the Copernican Revolution came in a few breaths, on a wild shore.
“Perhaps the Sand Reckoner was a piker, after all,” I said, to myself and the night, and the sea just close enough to hear. And the moon and stars.
Was our Moon simply another world, like and unlike ours? Was it truly like that?
“You have to be… adaptable,” I said. Well, sure-enough, by now I was.
There was a warrior’s hall I could reach by sunup. Those usually needed a bladesmith, and likely they’d already heard of me; and they were the sort of men who wouldn’t give a fig for the likes of Hrothgar the Bold or his desires and foibles. They wouldn’t balk at a woman mending their gear. And from there I would move onward, stalking my next life.
I looked up at the Moon. “Mani, you’ve been holding out on us,” I chided.
But I said it gratefully. Because some of us… really do live to serve.
(Based on some pre-existing setting and characters. And “take them to the stars” is the series title from Sylvain Neuvel’s Kibsu triliogy — pretty weird and rather good, surely not “derivative” at all.
Also, Part 3 is at least temporarily stuck in moderation, despite the installment plan, WPDE.)
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