Author's Note:
Shades of Treachery was previously published under Shadows over Tindrel: Wellspring Dragons Book 2
As the title of the book changed, a new edition is now available.
Shades of Treachery is now available for purchase in ebook format. Follow the universal link to the ebook.
Excerpt from Shades of Treachery
Chapter 1: Saving a Sylfaone
Shiobe, freelance fighter and speaker of eight languages, rolled over and snuggled into the plump silk pillows, expecting comforting softness to cradle her head—and sucked in a mouthful of dust.
What?
Her eyes snapped open as she choked. She shot up, gasping, throat stinging as small particles struck her soft palate, clutching her chest as her tearing eyes beheld earth rather than a malleable mattress. She hacked out powder, desperately trying to form saliva so she could spit. After coughing to exhaustion, she smashed the back of her hand over her lips and dug her other fingers into the soil; she had fallen asleep on a bed in Sikode’s tent. Where was she now?
Swirls of silvery-grey mist surrounded her, rather than shimmery silver tapestries and black screens. She blinked to clear her sight as an anxious chill raced through her arms and chest. The atmosphere resembled the foggy place the conjurer sent her earlier that night, but that unlucky man met his end in the teeth of the summoned beasts he called. Had another caster discovered her and returned her to the twilight mists? How? She and Sikode fled Soline to Merren via kick-portal, and no one knew they had left, let alone their destination.
Her heart beating a merry tune, she peered through the clouds. Other than a small circle of clear air that surrounded her, the landscape remained concealed behind the dark grey fog. Catching her breath, she listened for the howls of the blood-motivated doggies; nothing reached her other than a gentle, comforting hum, akin to a softly played, low-stringed instrument. That heartened her. Without Ti’torien, she had no idea how to battle the red-eyed, red-teethed beasts and defeat them.
Beads of sweat rolled down her forehead and into her eyes, and her warm velvet sleepwear soaked through. Where had the sweet, refreshing iciness gone? She held up a hand and brushed her fingers through the haze, watching the wisps trickle through her fingers and drift away. Something was wrong, like a cow pulling an upside-down, produce-filled wagon, and she could not believe it more strongly.
She rose to her feet and glanced about for a blue glint in the mists. Seeing icy butterflies would mean she tread in the same space as the sylfaone she met during her last visit. He had helped her leave then, and perhaps he would stoop to extending his aid again.
If he were a sylfaone. How could he be? Only legendary warriors and wielders haphazardly met sylfaodolon in strange places, not common freelance fighters like herself. She hardly counted as a hero who might, while scaling a curse-shrouded mountain, stumble upon a deity in an odd, dark, dripping, out-of-the-way cave, and then do something extraordinary to gain their favor.
Of course, those heroes usually had terrible accidents or died while proving themselves. Her father, with sardonic sarcasm, told her those stories proved humans should rely on personal strength or allies in dangerous situations and not on a random someone or other accidentally encountered in a place no sylfaone would deign to stand. The literature he gave her to read certainly reflected that belief. Maybe she needed to delve into more positive tales about sylf interference and favor, even though she recalled few outside stuffy religious texts.
The ice-blue butterfly appeared before her nose, spreading wide its head-sized wings. She jerked back as a shimmery, ice-blue mist with sparkling silvery-white glitter poured over her and floated down to her feet. The magick blanketed the ground, twinkling, before disappearing like the first Grey Hills snow. The paler veins that crisscrossed the wings in a knot design brightened, and the glow rolled across the soft, darker body and up the long antennae to pool around the large clubs.
It slowly flapped around her, then circled faster and flew into the twilight mists, leaving an evaporating, sparkly trail behind. She shuffled after it, hoping it led her to the sylfaone. She preferred his company to that of hungry doggy creatures, and he seemed nice enough during their previous encounter. After all, he had not killed her after she plowed him over!
What would she say to him, given another opportunity? She needed to come up with something intelligent, thoughtful. Scholars outside religious circles rarely consulted deities, and she must make the most of it.
The heat built, reminiscent of, but far more intense than, the stifling nights she spent in her one-room apartment above the Shady Sword, trying to sleep on a mattress drenched in her sweat. Now, as then, the streams of perspiration stung her eyes and rolled down her neck, making her itch. Now, as then, her clothing stuck to her skin, and pulled in strange ways. Now, as then, she suffered in misery because she had no idea how to alleviate it. Small windows that granted access to slightly less oppressive breezes were in short supply.
She chewed on her lower lip and pondered the mists. Right after the sylfaone promised the butterfly would return her to Iova, a debilitating heat infused the air surrounding him. She experienced little of it because the insect whisked her back to the jail, but the sylfaone reacted with immediate pain, clutching his chest and gouging his fingers into the earth.
Was the temperature meant to attack him? Why?
She proceeded, dragging her feet through the dust. The heat sapped her strength, and she could not move faster or with more enthusiasm. She wiped her brow, wishing she had a hair tie so she could keep the black strands from sticking to her arms. Frustrated, she divided her tangled tresses and created a messy braid that dangled down her back, which became an even more irritating weight shifting side to side.
Her head dipped, and she stared at her feet, urging them forward, step by agonizing step. Even during the Hot Sands days in Iova, she had not felt so lethargic.
The butterfly fluttered in her face. She jerked back and swatted at it, annoyed, then focused and did her best to follow more closely; she did not want to get lost. She did not know who sent her into the twilight mists this time, and her only way to leave resided with the sylfaone.
The butterfly zipped ahead, then impatiently waited for her, twinkling and sparkling. When she reached it, the mists brightened and she stepped into a cleared space. The man sat in the center, wearing the same dinged black breastplate and the same clean but faded black pants, in the same position with his head down, legs crossed, but this time he bent over in agony, his snow-white hand planted in the middle of his chest. Intense heat surrounded him, far more than what a human could endure for any length of time. His gold medallion gleamed bright with yellowish-orange magick, red splotches bursting across the surface, resembling the popping bubbles of boiling water.
Did the medallion have something to do with the heat?
The butterfly hovered at head height, sadness tinged with worry striking her with every beat of its wings.
“Can I help?”
The words just popped out of her mouth, did they not? What could she possibly do, to aid a sylfaone? If he suffered, another deity caused it.
It growled. Mentally. Normal butterflies did not growl, physically or mentally, and trepidation thrummed through her chest as the sound echoed through her mind. It winged to the left, and she reluctantly trudged after it, uncertain what else to do, knowing she could not stay in the circle much longer. The heat would knock her out or make her throw up.
The mists darkened, then withdrew to reveal a roughly hewn tunnel painted red, yellow streaks of a glumpy, light-producing substance running the length of it. The same oppressive heat that filled the twilight mists hung in the air, and sucking it in proved agonizing. She swiped at her face; her sweat dripped from her fingertips when she dropped her hands. She could not even wipe them on her clothing, because the fabric was too damp to soak up more liquid.
The butterfly shot down the tunnel. She crouched and followed, a silly precaution since the empty space had no convenient hiding places.
A subtle sensation of sinister darkness trickled across her skin, reminiscent of her experience as a child when her father took her to the ruins of Zere Enec. He eagerly explored the fallen stone walls, sifted through the bits and pieces of pottery shards and tiles, all the while heading towards the still-intact temple. A marvel, that it stood despite three thousand years of neglect! He wished to delve inside, perhaps uncover what spells the Sheune used to preserve the structure.
She clutched his hand, crying, the sense of hungry shadows and ominous malice growing with each step. He held her, confused, as her six-year-old vocabulary proved ineffective in describing her terror and the graveyard darkness that caused it.
Her distress convinced him to forego investigating the building, and as far as she knew, he had not returned. That she felt the same darkness bearing down on her in the place the butterfly brought her alarmed her. Had she misjudged it? Had she misjudged the sylfaone?
She did not think so.
The tunnel opened into a circular red room with several thin columns of cloudy-black rock spanning the back, which looked like teeth clenched in an enormous mouth. Gloopy red symbols decorated the center of each column, flakes of the paint lying in uneven piles below. They looked like warped Ciqi letters, and she wished she had her notebook, to make a sketch of them to send to her father for translation.
In front of the teeth, on top of a cylindrical black stone that shined like smooth obsidian, sat an unremarkable if large rock. It looked like the kind found at the bottom of streams near Tura. How odd. Those rocks held no innate value, did not glitter or gleam, and while sparkly streaks of black or red ran through some, most possessed unremarkable grainy brown surfaces smoothed by years of running water.
Why did such an ordinary rock lie in state within a heat-blighted cave? Was it a religious artifact? She had read descriptions from around six thousand years ago concerning altars that harbored sacred objects created by sylfaodolon, and the layout reminded her of those passages.
She shuddered. Those altars had numerous protections because sects possessing a sylfaone-blessed item vied endlessly with each other to prove their unique special something was more important than everyone else’s unique special something. The tedious and deadly ways the adherents tried to rid themselves of rivals made her exceedingly grateful that her family did not lean religious. She would rather stand aloof and watch the catastrophes from afar than compete in battles no one, in the end, won.
The butterfly fluttered over to the rock and hovered expectantly. She hesitated, glancing about, but discerned no other entrance or living being in the room. She scurried over and wished she had not; the heat grew more intense the closer she stepped to it. Did the warmth act as a barrier, a kind of shield?
If so, it did not affect the butterfly. The insect batted at the object, flitted to her, then returned and struck it again with its wings.
Uneasy about its insistence, she peered at the top, the sides, but saw nothing sylfish or frightening. She concluded it was a plain river rock just as a subtle flash sped across the surface. She concentrated; a transparent sheen, yellowish orange with dark red splotches, moved on top of the façade like runny lava. It matched the wielding that coursed over the sylfaone’s medallion. Did the magic connect the heat to the sylfaone somehow?
She scanned room; if she missed the sheen, she might have overlooked it on the walls and columns. Her scrutiny found nothing, even when she pressed her nose as close to the mottled teeth rock as possible. That was as well; she did not want to accidentally trigger something nasty and deadly.
The butterfly brushed her face with a wingtip, breaking her out of her thoughts. It tapped the stone, flew around her, bapped her head, and whisked to the object, tapping it again. It wanted her to take it? She hesitated—tampering with a special something a deity supposedly created would not be in her best interest.
“Who in the Abyss are you?”
0==]===> <===[==0
The Wellspring Dragons Series
Liminal Shadows: The Wellspring Dragons Book 1 (Chapter 1 of Book 1)
Shades of Treachery: The Wellspring Dragons Book 2
The Glass Volcano: The Wellspring Dragons Book 3 (Chapter 1 of Book 3)
Abyss of Dreams: The Wellspring Dragons Book 4 (Chapter 1 of Book 4)
Also visit The Wellspring Dragons World
