We offer you a sneak peak into our current Dragon’s Bard serial novel: Blackshore! Below you’ll find an excerpt from the book chapter. If you would like to read the complete chapter … simply register for updates in the sidebar on this page and you can download the complete chapter instantly!
An Excerpt from the Second Dragonsbard Novel: Blackshore
Chapter 6 Djara Djinnya
He pushed himself up from the deck and staggered over to the ladder leading up to the lower gun deck. He could hear the hammers battening down the main hatch two decks overhead. The air on the Berth deck had ceased whatever meager circulation it might previously have claimed. It was stifling and both his head and his stomach knew that he had to get out to fresher air. He gripped the railings on the ladder and hauled himself up.
The lower gun deck was deserted. He could see the rows of wand-cannons lining the deck, each one fixed in place. The Gunnery Mage for each division would be in charge of those during battle, triggering the mystical forces of each to hurl either projectiles or magical charges against enemy vessels. He had heard of such things but had never actually seen one in use. They were not entirely reliable and an occasional misfire was inevitable. Part of the Gunnery Mage’s job was to balance required force against the risks of something going wrong. A properly trained Gunnery Mage, he had heard the Captain say once while his head was over the aft rail, was the point on which victory or defeat was balanced.
At the moment, however, such glorious thoughts were pushed from his mind. He could feel a cascade of air from the overhead hatch, gripped the next ladder and pulled himself up in a sprint past the Main Gun Deck and onto the Weather Deck above.
His feet slipped instantly from under him and he slid across the deck, smashing against the port side bulwark. He instinctively wrapped his arms around a set of block and tackle extending to the backstays and looked back across the deck.
Rain poured down on him as the wind howled in the rigging overhead. The world had gone a grey-green everywhere he looked. For a moment, the sea itself seemed to be at an odd angle, as though the deck of the ship was level and the world was tilted. The placid surface was gone, replaced by enormous roiling waves capped in curling white, often appearing twice the height of the ship’s freeboard. The crew of the ship was climbing the ratlines into the rigging, moving along the footropes to reef the sails. He could hear the voice of the Sailing Master shouting from the quarterdeck, his voice nearly swallowed by the wind.
The world was in motion around him.
Something inside him moved, too.
He quickly pulled himself up on the bulwark railing and leaned over the side … reflecting that it was the only thing he had learned to do about the ship thus far.
He was bent over the rail when the wave reached up from the depths and dragged him, unnoticed, into the sea.
It was still.
Nicholas awoke, head laid to the side down on warm sand.
“Who are you?”
Nicholas cried out and pushed himself up from the sands with a start at the sound of the melodic voice, the brilliant white grains cascading from the side of his face.
Sitting before him on the sands was a woman. She had smooth, olive colored skin with an elegantly wide nose set in an oval face. Her smallish mouth nevertheless had full, rose-hued lips. Her black hair was pulled back from her face and woven into a long braid that extended down her back to a narrow waist. She wore a high-collared silken blouse with diaphanous sleeves, the same material that hinted at the beautiful shape of her legs within her silken pants. She sat cross legged on the sand, her feet bare with her long hands pressed together, with her chin resting lightly at the apex of her fingers. But it was the large, almond shaped eyes that held him spellbound; languid, liquid pools into which he longed to become lost.
“Whuh?” Nicholas was finding it difficult to form words.
She laughed and it was as though the sun arose in his soul.
“Whuh!” she giggled, her eyes flashing at him. “What is a ‘whuh’ and how did you become one?”
Nicholas shook himself largely, if not entirely, from his stupor. “No, I’m sorry … my name is Nicholas. Nicholas Baldernack.”
“Nicholas-nicholas Baldernack?” The girl turned her head sideways in disbelief. “Where are you from that your people should give you the same name twice.”
Nicholas couldn’t help but stare at her. “I … I don’t! I mean … you can just call me Nick. I guess my name is rather long.”
“Not nearly so long as mine,” the woman said with a sigh. “The last time it was recited in full was my Ascendance Day ceremony and it took five readers in shifts to complete it in one week.”
“That is a long name,” Nicholas agreed. “What may I call you, then, or will that take a month?”
The woman smiled again and the sun seemed brighter. “You may call me Djara.”
“Jara,” Nicholas repeated softly.
“No,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Djara.”
“That’s what I said,” Nicholas was confused.
“No, you said ‘Jara,” she replied. “Djara is completely different.”
“Perhaps you can help me with that,” Nicholas urged, feeling an unaccustomed confidence as they spoke.
“We appear to have plenty of time,” Djara noted, sweeping her arms around about them.
For the first time, Nicholas examined their surroundings.
They stood on a spit of white sand under a brilliant blue sky. The turquoise of the surrounding reef deepened to a cerulean blue beyond the white breakers of the surrounding coral reef about three hundred feet from shore. The white sands ran to a rise in the center no higher than two feet above the shore. The spit of sand was no more than fifty feet across at its widest point and perhaps two hundred feet long.
There was not a single plant or tree to be seen nor even a rock outcropping to provide any hope of shelter or shade.
“Do you like my bottle?” she asked.
“How long have you been here?” Nicholas asked in turn as he looked back at the woman, not fully comprehending what she was saying.
Djara shrugged then gathered up her knees in her arms, her bare toes digging into the sands. “I do not know. The sands wash clean each night and it gets tiresome counting the suns as they pass by. Time becomes meaningless when you have no one with whom you may watch it pass.”
Nicholas laughed once and then looked around once more. “But how have you survived here? There is no water you can drink … no food to eat. There’s no shelter from the sun or the…”
“Are you hot?”
“I … what do you mean?”
“Do you feel the heat of the sun on your skin?” she asked with a rueful smile. “Does your skin burn?”
Nicholas thought for a moment. He realized he had been standing in the sunlight for some time and while the temperature was comfortable he did not feel the warmth on his skin.
“But … what do we eat?” he asked.
“Let me tell you a story,” Djara said, standing up.
“A story?”
“Yes, it is a good story and it will please you to hear it,” Djara continued. “It is about a kingdom far beyond the sea where the Sphinxes rule beneath the peaks of the Xhai Ne Mountains.”
“Where the pink what rules?” Nicholas asked, his gaze fixed on Djara’s eyes.
“No … the Sphinxes,” Djara continued, her lithe arms sweeping gracefully out as she gestured. “Winged creatures of distant lands whose bodies are those resembling lions but with large heads looking like humans.”
Djara began to dance as she spoke, kicking up the sands around them. “Next to a glacial lake they built their greatest city in a mountain bowl. They called it Tsaranju, and it was where the wisest of the wise came each year for a contest of wits and knowledge. They came from many different lands from the distant horizons of the world that they might win.”
The sands flew upward around them, swirling in the air, shifting and gathering. Suddenly the sands grew denser in the air, the crystals reflecting different hues. They became walls, towers, streets stretching out beyond the lagoon surrounding the spit of sand. Clouds on the horizon shifted as well, becoming mountain peaks covered in snow as Nicholas watched in wonder.
“But it was in the marketplace – the great Bazaar of Tsaranju – where the most unlikely of heroes appeared. A tired and hungry traveler from a distant land. He had heard of the fabled wealth of Tsaranju and knew that there would be great treasures brought by all those who came to match their wisdom against one another. He had been a slave of thieves and it was all that he had been taught from his youth, but he was a good man with a good heart looking for a way to change his fate. Yet on this day, his fate would have to wait because he was standing in the market with no money and his hunger held the better part of his conscience at bay.”
The sands became the stalls of the marketplace. Nicholas could hear the muffled sound of sellers crying out their wares. In front of him, a mound of sand rose up from the ground, shaping into a stack of white-sand apples.
Nicholas smiled.
Djara continued her dance about Nicholas in the bazaar that had risen from the sands. “But though he was tempted, his heart would not allow him to steal again. He tried to think of a way whereby he might get an apple honestly and might have done so if Fate had not stepped in and made his decision for him. For he was a child of fate and his name was … Nicholas!”
In the instant his name was said, the world changed.
Nicholas stood dressed in tattered rags, a knapsack leaning against his feet. The sounds of the enormous bazaar overwhelmed him. The air was cool from the snow-capped mountains towering above him. He could smell the spices, their aromas mixing from the various stalls that formed a patchwork in every direction in the large square. More remarkable still, each was attended by a towering creature which was just as Djara had described them; their bodies those of lions with large human-looking heads. Each wore coats of bright colors ornamented with golden brocade woven into the cloth from which the brilliant feathers of their multi-colored wings emerged. The spindly towers of the city rose above the bazaar, magnificently delicate and decorated in intricate patterns of blue, green and golden tiles.
He turned back to the apples. They no longer looked like they were made of sand but gleamed in the morning light with a polished shine. As he moved closer to examine them, a small imp creature darted out from beneath the table. He glanced at Nicholas, then at the sphinx fruit vendor who had turned his back to the table.
It was all the opportunity the imp needed. The little creature snatched an apple from the cart and tossed it at Nicholas.
Surprised, Nicholas caught the apple.
“Thief!” screamed the imp, pointing at Nicholas.
The sphinx fruit vendor wheeled around at once.
Nicholas looked at the sphinx.
The sphinx looked at the fruit in his hands.
“Run!” yelled Djara, grabbing Nicholas by his free hand and dragging him away.
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