It took Caewen an hour to recover enough to walk. Even then, she was pale and had difficulty moving forward without frequent rests. The tunnel they followed was mostly carved out of the sleeping rock of the mountains, and the arches and stonework were so close-fitting they needed no mortar. Graven stone sconces decorated the…
Category: Writing
A Charm for the Nameless Child #15
He looked back the way they had come. Nothing stirred in that direction. With few other choices, he decided to keep walking into the ruined town. Assuming that he was simply separated from the others, he guessed that his best bet was to look for them at the great rock that stood at the heart…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #14
They rode through the morning without any trouble. Now and again, they crested small rises, and were able to see up the valley. Ahead, the narrow rift of the valley opened and filled with sunlight. They could see a place where the stream seemed to erupt out of the side of a wide, flat-topped prominence…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #9
The boy woke with a start. Oily, delicious smelling smoke was tickling around his nose and throat. He blinked blearily. With the blanket wrapped about his thin shoulders, he poked his head outside. The sky above was casting bold blue-grey light into the woods. “What?” he said, confused, not fully remembering where he was at…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #8
There was a misty gloom outside the tent, though the boy had no idea if the hour were dawn, or dusk, or somewhere in between. He heard the lady and her horse talking. They seemed distant, as if they had moved away from the turf house where we was curled up under blankets, breathing the…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #7
The next morning, he woke with a numbness in his limbs. He felt cold, despite the morning sun and radiance from hot ashes, and there was a sharp pain in his chest. He discovered a hard, rattling wheeze in his lungs when he spoke. “I don’t feel so well.” The young woman, Caewen, crouched over…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #6
The next morning, he woke without any sense of life in his limbs. He felt cold, despite the morning sun and radiance from hot ashes. There was a sharp pain in his chest. “I don’t feel so well.” The young woman crouched over him. She put a hand on his forehead, and against his cheek….
A Charm for the Nameless Child #5
“Oh,” she waved a hand and shifted herself so that she was sitting up against the flank of the big grey and black dapple horse. “Useful? Being nameless. Or, more to the point, if you don’t know your own true name… if you’ve never known a name of your own… well, it makes you like…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #4
The woman had a look of puzzlement on her face, clouding to mingled curiosity and suspicion. “A shivering child alone in the woods. Are you ghost or flesh?” But before the boy could answer, the horse shook his head and smiled with sharp teeth in a very unhorselike way. A faint red light shone in…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #3
The boy walked a long time in the darkness, tripping on roots, slipping down hillsides that were slick with leafy mould. The smells of the wet night drifted around him. Night-creatures raised their voices somewhere off in the woods. By chance, he came across a reedy pond so brimming with frogs that the sound was…