The Shining Citadel, by A.L. Butcher
* * * * (4 stars)

The Shining Citadel is the second book in The Light Beyond the Storm Chronicles. This book centers around the search for a lost city that can help the elves rise from their current sorry state, and gives the backstory on how they fell from their former glory. Archos and Dii are back, along with Olek and Ozena, and are joined by Th'alia, a captive elf who is being forced to lead them into a trap so that the Witch Hunters can claim the riches of the lost Citadel for themselves and get rid of the Archmage Archos, along with Marden, Th'alia's Witch Hunter escort and Talfor, a troll.

As in the first book, the characters are strong, unique, and engaging. It was fun to catch up with Archos, the thoroughly awesome mage, and to see how Dii and the other characters from book 1 are doing. Marden's character arc was especially interesting, as the Witch Hunter comes face to face with the fact that everything he's been taught about elves and mages is a lie. The group - Archos, Dii, Olek, Ozena, Th'alia, Marden, and Talfor - meet up with exciting and dangerous adventures during their search for the Shining Citadel. And the trolls in this world are really cool.

Some long, tangled, run-on sentences make the book a little difficult to read in places, and, as in book 1, there are some very explicit sex scenes. However, readers who prefer to avoid reading explicit material can skim over or skip those scenes without the story being affected.

On the whole, The Shining Citadel is an exciting, heroic fantasy adventure with great characters that kept me reading, wanting to know what happens to the characters and to learn more about this fascinating world.

Journey to Altmortis, by Thaddeus White

rating: * * * * (4 stars)

Fun fantasy adventure, featuring some of the secondary characters from Bane of Souls. Thaddeus, master of the underground, and his sister Lynette, accompanied by Pretty Pierre and Roger the Goat (actually a man; "goat" is a well-earned nickname) head off to the fabled, long-dead city of Altmortis in pursuit of two brothers who have stolen some items of great value and importance to them. Along the way they meet with a variety of adventures and dangers, including a crazed cannibal serial killer and a village of truly creepy beings, the Hykirs, who have their weird eyes on Lynette and Anja, the women in the group. Then, when they find the city and disturb a nest of hungry baby dragons, things really get interesting!

The story seemed a bit slow until they ran into the baby dragons; from that point to the end it really grabbed me and wouldn't let go. But the Hykirs were wonderfully creepy, and I really enjoyed that part. I would have liked the part with the serial killer/cannibal to have more real significance to the plot; that part was too good to just be a passing incident.

For me there was the right amount of description and world-building. I think it really helped that I read Bane of Souls first, so I already knew who the starting characters were and a little about how that world works. Thaddeus and Lynette's secret did seem to kind of come from out of nowhere; I can't remember if any hints were dropped about it earlier. But it's a very cool secret.

I enjoyed seeing more of Pretty Pierre; a really good character from Bane of Souls. I also enjoyed Anja and Fritigern, who are new to this book. Roger the Goat is amusingly revolting; I was glad to see him have an important role in this story.

All in all, a fun read.

Coming up for air from all the holiday preparations and everything else to say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and thanks to everyone who has supported me during my first year of publishing!

Have a cookie :D

I'll be back with more musings on fantasy and writing and updates on my current projects as soon as I've recovered from all the cooking and festivities.

Meet Middle Grade/YA fantasy author Elle Jacklee, and read an excerpt from her new book, The Tree of Mindala:

1. Tell us a little about yourself.
I live in Wisconsin with my husband and two young sons. In the past, I've been a software programmer, inside sales representative and a bilingual customer service representative. I'm thrilled to have added "author" to that list. Besides reading and of course writing, I enjoy cooking, baking, biking, playing tennis and downhill skiing. I believe in karma and the power of positive thinking!

2. When did you start writing, and why?
I wrote my first story when I was seven years old. I had already discovered how much fun reading could be. I remember that when I discovered that the books I read were written by people (as opposed to just falling from heaven :) I immediately was determined to write stories that I hoped would bring as much enjoyment to other people as other people's stories brought to me. That's still my goal today.

3. What do you write, and why? What do you enjoy about what you write?
I write middle grade/YA fantasy. I decided to write for that age group because it was the books that I read at that age that had the biggest impact on me. Books aimed at that age group take on a bit more complexity and hopefully evoke an excitement in readers that they may be experiencing for the first time in a book. If they haven't fallen in love with reading already, it may be these books that hook them for life. I'm passionate about the importance of reading so if my writing can ignite that spark in someone, then I call that success.

4. What is your latest book or series? Any forthcoming books?
The Tree of Mindala is the first book in my Wunderwood series. I'm currently in the midst of writing the next one, The Triad of the Tree. And characters, new and old, still are clamoring to tell more of their stories, so I do have plans for subsequent books after that...

5. "Welcome To My Worlds": Tell us a little about the world of your latest book or series.
Wunderwood has long been enchanted as a result of the sacrifice made by Mindala, a character who readers will learn more about as the series progresses. For now, suffice it to say that it is because of Mindala that the inhabitants of this realm enjoy a mostly contented life, with magic at their disposal. Wunderwood is a place that has a way of maintaining a delicate balance. Of course, its inhabitants have free will, and when their choices upset the natural balance of this world, things have a way of being put right, one way or another. In that way, I guess you could say Wunderwood is an example of art imitating life.

6. Introduce us to some of your characters. What do you like about them?
Miranda Moon, the main character, is just days away from her twelfth birthday at the beginning of The Tree of Mindala. She has an overactive imagination, to say the least, and it's that personality trait that often gets her into trouble at school. It's also the thing her younger brother, Marcus, who runs with the popular crowd, holds against her. But it's the thing Miranda likes most about herself. I like that she is true to herself, even though some people even think of her as a bit "crazy". Of course, when she and Marcus find themselves in Wunderwood, a place where they meet people and creatures that even Miranda never imagined, she feels even better about it!

One of the creatures they meet in this magical place is Skye, a Morphiad who has the power to transform into any living creature or person that he has ever touched, giving him a unique perspective, even in this land. He is fiercely loyal and protective of his human companion, Raina, who just happens to be related to Miranda and Marcus. Then, of course, there is Thornton Crow. Once banished for his evil deeds, he is now at large and more determined than ever to seize control of the source of Wunderwood's magic, the Tree of Mindala. Along with his followers, the HOPs (or Hoarders of Power), he believes that Mindala would never have wanted her gift of magic to be squandered away on what he considers the mediocre existence most of Wunderwood is living. He wishes to unleash the full potential of the powerful magic, and regards any and all consequences worth it. He is the kind of evil I hope readers love to hate!  

7. A fun fact you would like your readers to know about you or your book.
The idea for the world of Wunderwood and Miranda Moon came to me one fall day around Halloween when I was home from work with a migraine headache. I was looking out the window at the leaves on my patio that were swirling in the wind that just happened to be howling that day. It was a little spooky, but I thought it was beautiful at the same time. I've always loved Halloween, and by the end of that day (after a few doses of headache medicine), Wunderwood and Miranda Moon were born, and I had a rough outline of the story fleshed out. Until that day, I never thought I'd be thankful for a headache!

8. Blog/site link, and where your book is available.
The Tree of Mindala is available for purchase at: Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Official book trailer: http://youtu.be/-e2MwDserCc
Facebook Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/elle.jacklee
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ellejacklee

The Tree of Mindala:

"Miranda Moon's vivid imagination has gotten her into trouble more times than she can count. This time, she's been suspended from school. So her straight-laced younger brother, Marcus, blames her when they're relegated to their late grandparents' old cabin over Halloween weekend. But when Miranda finds a curious trinket, they're mysteriously whisked away to Wunderwood, where magic flows through the trees and everyone already knows their family name. A place even Miranda never imagined.

Just as they arrive, a sinister warlock, Thornton Crow, is freed from a long banishment. He resumes his deadly agenda to find The Tree of Mindala, the source of all the realm's magic. As Miranda and Marcus discover branches of their own family tree that they hadn't even known existed, they learn that Thornton has a score to settle with anyone in their bloodline. Especially them... Though justice has always had a way of being naturally restored in Wunderwood, Thornton's latest evil deed just may be the tipping point.

When Miranda discovers her own role in Thornton's release, she knows it's up to her to stop him from stealing not just magic, but also hope. With travel companions that could as easily be foes as friends, and only the cryptic words of a prophecy to guide her, Miranda must decide if she can carry out the task that will either save Wunderwood... or doom it forever. "

Excerpt from The Tree of Mindala:

Miranda knocked twice, and the door, already ajar, opened a little further. But there was no reply. She knocked again, harder, and this time the door swung all the way in with a long creak. A terrible odor accosted them. If Miranda had to describe it, she would say it was a mixture of rotting garbage, hot metal, and Marcus’ dirty sweat socks... only worse.

“What are you doing?” Marcus demanded, pinching his nose.

“I only knocked!” Miranda retorted. “Then the door opened. It must have been the wind!”

She poked her head inside and called, “Hello?” No reply. “Anyone home?” Nothing. She couldn’t resist looking around.

“That’s strange,” she mumbled, pointing to a window that she hadn’t seen from outside but through which the outside was clearly visible. As she continued her tour of the room, Miranda inadvertently tapped a big rock that slightly resembled a chair. In front of it was a stone table upon which stood a small lantern whose lit candle they had seen from outside, as well as a variety of jars and beakers in different shapes and sizes. Some were empty, some contained plant leaves, twigs, and various animal and insect body parts. There were also several loose pieces of paper on the table, and a few on the rough cobblestone floor that must have blown off the table when the door opened.

Someone shuffled out from the shadows in the corner of the room toward the table. Miranda and Marcus held their breath while they stared at the little person. He was about as tall as a five-year-old, but he appeared much, much older. He had a silky white beard that fell to his knees, and long white eyebrows that drooped over milky-blue eyes. His head was bald at the top. But the hair on the sides and in back was thick, long, and the same frosty white as his beard. He wore a drab, beige tunic that looked scratchy, like burlap. As he bent down to pick up the papers, his back was to Miranda and Marcus, and they could see that his tunic was worn quite thin at the elbows and at the rump. He didn’t seem to notice them standing there.

As he stretched up on the tips of his toes to place the papers back on the slab of a table, he bumped one of the beakers, which teetered from side to side, threatening to fall off the uneven surface. The curious little man threw his arms up to catch it, but it stopped teetering and eventually became completely still. “Whew,” he sighed.

“Hello?” Miranda said again, a little quieter this time.

“Oh, Alvore’s Mane!” the little man swore under his breath, slumping his shoulders in exasperation. He abruptly turned to face them. “Can’t ya take a hint?” he demanded, his eyebrows forming a V.

“Beg your pardon, sir,” Marcus apologized quickly. “Sorry to have disturbed you.” He tugged on Miranda’s elbow, but she snatched it away, flashing an irritated face at him. Then, smiling her sweetest smile, she addressed the gruff little man.

“Sir,” she began, “May we speak to you for just a moment? I think we may be... um... lost. “ She blinked her eyes a few times, hoping to appeal to his softer side, if he had one. This usually worked with her father.

“Lost? That’s for certain. Ya’d have to be looking fer trouble if ya were meanin’ to come here. Now, what ya wanna do is t’get yarselves as far away from here as possible.” Then he whispered, “Thornton may return at any time.”

“Perfect! Maybe we should wait for him!” Miranda clasped her hands together happily.

“Wait for him?! Miss, have ya been sniffin’ on loreberry leaves? Why would anyone hang around waiting fer Thornton?” Then he paused, squinting his eyes and pointing a thick, bulbous finger at them. “Unless... ya’re a couple o’those HOPs!” he accused, backing slowly away from them.

“What? No!” Miranda assured him. “Wait... what’s a HOP?”

“What’s a HOP? Are ya tryin’ to be funny? ‘Cause this is no time fer jokin’, miss.”

“Funny? No, sir. All we know is one minute we were in our grandparents’ cabin where I found this,” she held out the glass globe which he gingerly took from her, “and the next minute we were here, wherever here is, and we were just wondering—”

“On Truman’s teeth, I’ve never seen the likes of it...” the little man uttered, staring wide-eyed at the globe.

“Truman?” Miranda and Marcus repeated. “Truman was our grandfather’s name.”

The odd little man regarded them thoughtfully for a few seconds. Then realization swept over his face. “Well, that explains that, dunn’n it?” The little man came closer, getting a better look at them. “I’m Agapanthus Rush, of the original Rush Gardeners. Pleased ta meet ya.” He bowed deeply, his round nose nearly touching the floor.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr Rush. I’m Miranda Moon—”

“Yes, yes. O’course y’are. Call me Aggie.”

The Tree of Mindala is available for purchase at: Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Official book trailer: http://youtu.be/-e2MwDserCc

Introducing H.M. Jones and her new book, Monochrome:

H.M. Jones lives in the Pacific Northwest with her two preschoolers, cat and husband. When she is not writing, and ignoring the meows of un-constructive criticism that Pepper flings her way, she is bookstore shopping with her family, raising her wonderful kids, teaching community college, drinking tea, watching period pieces and blogging about reading and writing. She finished Monochrome as an ebook October 2013 and just released it in print December 2013. The masses (twenty is a mass, right?) could not be ignored.

Monochrome:

A young mother battles postpartum depression, marital troubles and addiction. Her weary mind plagued with horrible thoughts not her own, she decides to end it all. Suddenly, her mind and heart begin to race, her vision blurs and goes black. She awakes in a strange, dull, monochromatic blue world. Here, she comes face-to-face with the most beautiful and ugliest moments of her life, choosing those that she will lose forever, and those that are too precious to let go. In a world where many choose a living death, and no one is above suspicion, will her handsome Guide help her fight her way back to the beautiful life she left behind, or will she succumb to her ugliest urges and let her sweetest memories disappear into the blue?

Available at:
Amazon (Kindle and paperback) | Barnes & Noble (Nook) | Smashwords (ebook)

Where to find H.M. Jones:
Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Google+

You may or may not have noticed, a few days ago I posted "The Path of Haveshi Yellowcrow" and "The Path of Latan the Clerk," two connected short (well, kind of long, actually) stories loosely related to Chosen of Azara. They'll be free to read here on the site until Dec. 12, and then they'll go up for sale on Amazon. [Update: these stories are now available on Amazon in a volume titled The Warrior and the Holy Man.]

In Chosen of Azara, as Lucie is researching the history of the Madrinan Empire to try to decide if Sevry's story is true, she comes across a passing reference to a discredited Kriethi historian and his female Krunabashai bodyguard. These two stories tell the tale of the historian and the bodyguard. I'd been calling Latan "the Scholar," but he's really just a lowly clerk who dabbles in historical research in his spare time, and since he's such a modest fellow he insisted I change it to "clerk." But he still made it into at least one of the history books of his world. I don't know if he'd be more pleased or embarrassed about that.

In the titles, I also replaced "tale" with "path." "Path" is a little more different and interesting, plus a major theme in both stories is the paths life takes us on, both expected and unexpected. Both Haveshi and Latan think they know what they want out of life and exactly how their lives are going to go - they're happy, or at least content, with the paths their lives are following. Then unexpected events force them from those paths and require them to find new ways to live.

These two stories are a great example of how old ideas evolve into new ones. Haveshi's story originally started out as a novel set in Estelend [Edit: I have since changed the name of this world to Tehovir] (the same world as Chosen of Azara, with magical Sources playing an important role), with the events the same as in the story and then dragging on and on as Haveshi and her companion Daivashan went from one place to another without actually accomplishing much of anything. Back in those days (early 90s), you either wrote novels or you wrote for the short story market, and I was a novel writer. If I ever decided to dabble my toes again in publishing, I would need novel-length offerings to present to agents and editors. And so I took a story that didn't really have enough story in it to be a novel and tried to stretch it out into one.

Then, in the last year or so, when I was looking through my old story files and thinking about the new, expanded possibilities offered by self-publishing - no arbitrary word count or length guidelines set by publishers based on the economics of publishing paper books or magazines; stories could be as long or short as they needed to be - I realized that Haveshi's story would be perfect as a longish short story. She finds her answer without all that pointless wandering around, and sets off for her new life, the end.

The other seed of this pair of stories came from this fragment. (And I'm going to be really really brave and post it here exactly as I wrote it umpteen years ago.)

Ok, first of all (besides the head-hopping), you may notice a few familiar names. Sevry, the name of the wizard in this fragment, became the name of the last King of Savaru and the hero of Chosen of Azara. That Sevry is many things, but most definitely not a wizard; I decided that name worked well for him, so I re-purposed it. Also, Perar became Perarre, the heroine of The Lost Book of Anggird, who is also most definitely not a bodyguard. So with the characters' names being used for other stories, I had pretty much decided this fragment was dead. But I still liked the idea: a lowly member of some sort of order about to set out on a journey finding out, to his dismay, that a woman has been assigned to be his guard.

Eventually, Sevry the wizard morphed into Latan the Scholar (and then the Clerk), And then I made the connection - the female bodyguard is Haveshi, from that other abandoned project. This set Latan's story firmly in the world of Chosen of Azara. When I tried to figure out the point of the journey he was going on, I realized that he had made a momentous discovery related to the conspiracy that destroyed Savaru, and he's going to present this discovery to the High Priest of the Madrinan Empire. And, ta daa, I had my stories; it was just a matter of writing them.

Haveshi's story comes first in the duology. It tells how she got derailed from the path her life was on and came to be a mercenary in a conquered land that is now part of the Madrinan Empire. Then her story continues with Latan's story, when she's assigned to guard him on a journey that proves as disruptive to his life's path as the events in her story were to hers. I suggest reading Haveshi first, then Latan, but it could work the other way around, too.

"The Path of Latan the Scholar" contains a spoiler for an event early on in Chosen of Azara, but the way it's presented, and the fact that the event happens so early in Chosen, it won't spoil the whole novel - I like to think of it as a teaser. Chosen of Azara also contains a spoiler for "The Path of Latan the Scholar," but that spoiler doesn't take in nearly the whole of the story. So either way, there's information given. If you're wondering what to read first, I'd say it could go either way - consider "The Path of Latan the Scholar" a teaser for Chosen of Azara, or a supplement to it.

I've also posted an updated map of Estelend, showing Source Tiati, where Latan lives, in Krieth in the south part of the Madrinan Empire.

If you haven't read Chosen of Azara yet, you can get an introduction to that world in "The Path of Haveshi Yellowcrow" and "The Path of Latan the Clerk," and if you've read it, you can get the scoop on that discredited historian and his female bodyguard.  I hope you'll take a look, and enjoy the stories!

***Shameless self-promotion (but hey, it's my blog, it's all about self-promotion!): if you haven't read Chosen of Azara yet and want to, it's available at:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple | Sony | Diesel
Smashwords | CreateSpace | All Romance eBooks

In addition to Thanksgiving and my birthday, for me November means National Novel Writing Month. And since no one can procrastinate like a writer on a deadline, November also often means finding new and creative ways to put off having to commit words to paper (or the screen). This year, the way I came up with to procrastinate was counting my lifetime output of words.

Many writers have a strange obsession with word count. In the days of using typewriters, you gauged how much you accomplished by how many pages you had written. Now that most writers use computers, pages are irrelevant and productivity is measured by the number of words you wrote. National Novel Writing Month requires 50,000 words to complete the challenge. Agents and publishers specify the number of words manuscripts need to have to be considered for publication. Writers set goals of 1000 or 2000 or 5000 words per day.

And there's a bit of common writerly wisdom that it takes a million words to get good at writing (or, alternatively, "the first million words are crap"). Like most common wisdom, there's some truth to this, but it isn't entirely true. It is true that writing is something you get better at the more you do it. But the measure of a million words seems kind of arbitrary. Someone who is an avid reader and/or got good grades in English (or whatever language they're writing in) is probably going to start out ahead, quality-wise, of someone who's never read a book or who doesn't know how to put understandable sentences together. Granted, some people have a natural instinct for storytelling that transcends proper writing mechanics, so they're ahead as far as that goes, but writing is communication and it doesn't matter how good your story is if you can't communicate it in a way that your readers will understand.

On the other hand, other people might have a gift for writing beautiful prose but no sense of how to put together an exciting, entertaining story. So they have a lot of work to do, too. (I, for one, would rather read an entertaining, engaging story that is written in inexpert prose than something that's beautifully written but boring.)

So, not every writer starts out at the same level of crappiness. Then there's the factor of how hard they work at improving their craft. If you write a lot, you're almost bound to get better at it without even trying. But if you read good books to learn how prose and storytelling work, and seek out good writing advice and really work on applying it, you're going to get better even faster.

But even with all these qualifiers, some writers (or me, at least) are curious about how far along they are on that fabled million words or how long ago they passed it by. So, in the spirit of NaNo-ly procrastination, I totaled up my lifetime word count (as an adult; I didn't count the stories and plays I wrote in elementary school :-D).

First, for non-writers, numbers of words might not really mean anything. How much is 50,000 words? How much is 1000 words, a million words? Here are some examples to give some idea of scale, of word counts of famous novels (from this site):

Harry Potter and the Philospher's/Sorcerer's Stone: 77,325
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 198,227
The Hobbit: 95,022
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: 30,644
Nineteen Eighty-Four: 88,942
To Kill a Mockingbird: 99,121
Fahrenheit 451: 46,118
Lord of the Rings Trilogy: 455,125
A Game of Thrones: 284,000 (from here)
Brave New World: 63,766

Methodology: first I looked up how to add columns in a spreadsheet. (More procrastination; plus I'm pretty clueless about spreadsheets.) I only counted the latest version of each work, instead of earlier drafts, so there are a lot of cut scenes that didn't get counted. In cases where I re-wrote something from scratch, I did count both the earlier, abandoned version and the new version. I counted novels, novellas, short stories, and story fragments, but not my handful of poems because writing poetry is a completely different discipline from writing prose fiction. Also, it isn't that many words. And I am most definitely not a poet. :-P

So, counting that way, my lifetime word count between 1990 and 2013 is 1,614,156 (counting the novel I wrote in November; I added it in when it was done). Well past the million-word mark, you'll notice.

Broken down further:
1990-2000: 444,095 words
2000-2008 (when I began writing fanfiction through the last year before I seriously did NaNoWriMo for the first time): 405,878
2009-2013 (when I got a big creative kick from completing NaNo for the first time through the present): 632,176.

If you're adding along with me, you'll notice I passed 1,000,000 words sometime in 2010. As for when my writing graduated from "crap" to "not crap," I like to think it happened (if I say so myself, if it doesn't seem like I'm being arrogant to assume that my writing has made that shift) sometime in the early 2000s, when I was turning out large quantities of fanfiction on a regular basis. Lots of writing in a short period of time with close attention to quality will elevate the level of your writing, no matter where it starts out.

This year, 2013, has been my best writing year ever, with 271,303 words. 195,927 of those words are books 2-6 of the Daughter of the Wildings series. I expect to add quite a few words when I revise (I generally tend to "write short" and then fill out details in revision), so my lifetime word count will go up by the time that series is ready for publication.

Fanfiction got me back into writing at a time when I had lost heart for writing for a few years, and from 2000-2003 I wrote a great deal of fanfic. 405,878 words of it. I also wrote the original version of Chosen of Azara during this time, about 70,000 words, but I counted that in my 2009-2013 output because I re-wrote it pretty extensively this year and last year and extended it to 81,000 words. My lifetime fanfiction total is 632,176 words and original fiction total is 981,980. All those words of fanfiction were a significant factor in reaching the first million words, and I think I improved a lot as a writer while writing them. My experience with fanfiction is another post for another time, but I will say that, even though I keep my fanfic writer identity separate from my identity here, writing all that fic helped make me the writer I am today. (For whatever that's worth!)

Among the pre-2000 output are my first two complete novels; the second one is actually a sequel to the first and I had totally forgotten that I had finished it. So that was an interesting surprise to come across! I plan on evaluating them to see if they're worth revising and publishing; I think they probably are. There are also some fragments of novels set in the same world as Chosen of Azara, that I'm looking forward to developing and completing. Once Daughter of the Wildings is into the final revision stages and being released, sometime next year, I'll start on those.

On to two million!

(Image credit: Zsuzsanna Kilian, stock.xchng)

Here's another peek inside The Lost Book of Anggird: Perarre catches a cold:

Perarre nodded and dropped into her chair at the work table. What had she been expecting, that he would see how sick she was, feel sorry for her, and give her the day off? She shuffled her book and papers and pens around, not quite able to focus her foggy, feverish mind on her work. When she opened the book and tried to read its archaic script, her eyes watered and ached. She dropped her head to the table and covered it with her arms to block out the light.

“Miss Tabrano!” The Professor sounded genuinely alarmed. Perarre heard him come around from behind his desk, then she felt a light touch on her face. “You have a fever! Why didn’t you tell me you were ill?”

“Can I have the day off so I can die in peace, sir?” she mumbled. “And please don’t fire me.”

To her astonishment, instead of firing her, he started gently massaging her temples. Gradually, the pain in her head ebbed away, along with the feverish feeling.  The comfort spread to her watery eyes, stuffed-up nose, and burning throat. The Professor’s hands moved to her shoulders, still keeping the same light, slow, rhythmic touch. Then the touch faltered and he stopped. “I apologize for not realizing sooner that you were in distress, and for being unable to provide more relief,” he said. His voice had gone quiet and slightly husky.

Perarre raised her head and looked at him. “You can Heal.”

“I only achieved an Adequate ranking in Healing. I have some… difficulty with the Balance.” His face was covered with a light sheen of sweat, like it had been the day she stepped on his foot.

Of course. Healing was Balanced by pain for the Healer; the Healer had to filter the discomfort and distress taken from the patient out of the magica he had used before allowing the magica to return to its place. Even the small amount of pain that would be brought on by giving mild relief to cold symptoms was probably almost unbearable for the Professor. “Will you be all right, Professor?”

He nodded. “It usually passes before very long. I think I’ll go lie down for a bit. You are excused from work until you are well again. Only, Miss Tabrano —”

“Yes, sir?”

“You do not have my permission to die.”

The Lost Book of Anggird is available from:
Amazon | Apple | Diesel
Smashwords | CreateSpace
All Romance eBooks