“Spells of a Mortal’s Weaving” is the book that I started in the spring of 1993. I finally finished it a few months ago. Ideally, this would be book one of three. I need to see if the publishing world will consent to books two & three. Oh, who am I kidding? I have to see what happens so I’ll write them regardless!

What is it about, you ask? Just your basic epic fantasy tale: a parallel world, an oppressed people with magical talents, wizards, warriors, true love, battles, evil doers and through it all places I wish were real and characters that ought to be! Welcome to my head.

 

CHAPTER ONE                                        

     Meg had spent her whole life reading and listening to many wonderful stories.  She had reveled in beginnings and endings, in true-hearted heroes and foul-minded villains.  She knew the classic plots and subplots, of the hero’s journey and of great odds overcome in an impossible cause.  Unfortunately, though she had been listening to the storytellers and dreamers all her life, when Meg’s story began it was not announced in so traditional a fashion. There was no blaze of glory, or cloud of foreboding doom but rather she only had a breeze softly caressing her flushed cheeks to tell her that it had begun.

     She had been running, a common enough occurrence as it was something she did daily.  She took deep breaths as her body adjusted to the melding of pleasure and pain that was a typical workout.  Her arms labored, her head looked straight ahead.  In the first half-mile or so of a run she always concentrated on her form, on getting warmed up and on finding her groove.  She checked her watch.  She was a on a good steady eight-minute-mile pace.  She headed for the tree-covered hills. As she climbed Meg allowed her mind to wander.

     Running had always had a soothing effect on her.  For as long as she could remember, Meg had been running.  She had begun competing in the fifth grade and she had continued through junior high and high school on into college.  Now Meg ran purely for her own benefit. Frankly, she couldn’t stop.  It was in her blood.

     She was past the housing tracts now, entering the hills above the quiet neighborhood.  She moved off the sidewalks of California suburbia and on to the dirt path that wound through scattered oak trees up the hill.  Twilight had begun to paint the summer sky a thousand colors.  There was a pain in her shoulder but Meg ignored it and ran through it, past the pain.  Meg’s mind drifted instead along the events of the day, things she had done and the things she intended to do tomorrow.  Daydreaming and bemused, she was only partially aware of her surroundings. They were so familiar to her.  Her body was on automatic pilot.   

     It was then she tripped and stumbled.  Jerked back to the here and now by her awkward gaffe she caught herself.  As she regained her balance she felt the oddest tilting sensation beneath her feet, like the big earthquake of a few years past and yet, entirely different.  She felt dizzy and a little light-headed.  The ground seemed to shift treacherously beneath her.  This time she could not catch herself and she sprawled clumsily to the ground. 

     Meg sat up embarrassed. She was grateful no one had been around to see her.  This trail was popular with runners.  Meg liked that. It made her feel safer when she ran in the evenings. She got up and brushed herself off.  Obviously, she must have been pushing herself harder than she realized up the slope.  She took a few deep breaths, adjusted her ponytail a bit, more out of habit than from any real need to, and then turned to gaze down at the city below her. 

     There was no city below.

     It suddenly seemed difficult to swallow and Meg had to fight to keep her breathing even. Okay, she thought, close your eyes and count to ten, then look again.  The little imp that lived in the back of her brain whispered, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”  She counted and looked again. There was still no town, no subdivisions and no streets. 

     The sun was higher in the sky than it should have been. It shone upon a valley that looked not unlike what her hometown of Santa Rosa must have once looked like.  There were oak trees with some bay and madrone mixed in.  Golden, dried grass covered the hillside and brilliantly red-barked mazanita was plentiful.  It was lovely but Meg’s mind reeled at the sight of it all. 

     “Okay, get a grip.” She said aloud to herself. There are a couple of possibilities here.  One, she’d hit her head and was now in a state of unconscious delirium. Two, she’d run much farther than she thought up into the state park above her neighborhood and had somehow managed to lose her way in hills that she’d roamed since she was eleven. Last, she’d been swept away to Oz, or Narnia the imp added, one could never leave out Narnia.  Since it seemed highly unlikely that she was lost and unfortunately, Oz and Narnia did not really seem like viable options either, a bump on the head was definitely the winning answer.

     That’s just fine, she thought. See, logic works, I feel much better now that I’ve reasoned it out.  Yes, yes, logic works.  She tried not to wince at the thought of how much her head would hurt when she woke up.  Meg turned and continued up the hillside.  She walked slowly now.

     It was the shouting that alerted Meg.  They were angry voices. Thankfully, she could not make out the words, only that they were ugly ones.

     Instinctively, she halted and crouched low to the ground off to the side of the dirt trail that she had been following.  There was a clearing where the slope evened out to a flat hilltop in front of her. It was from there that the noise had emanated.  Her disbelieving gaze took in a group of people. It was a large group of perhaps sixty in all.

     The people before her were dressed archaically, most in uniforms, and armed.  Really, Meg thought delightedly, they look even better than the actors at the Renaissance Faire, though these costumes seemed to come from an earlier time period.  Someone had really worked hard and researched extensively to get those costumes so authentic looking.   Most, but not all, of those in uniform were men. Meg’s gaze was then drawn to those individuals who were playing the part of the prisoners.  For prisoners they surely must be.  Their clothes were ragged and looked extremely dirty.  They were chained together by a very thin restraint, hardly more than a cord.  It’s SCA, she thought, it has to be SCA. The Society for Creative Anachronism was renowned for its realistic reenactments of medieval court and battle scenes.  Perhaps this was another aspect of their activities.

     Meg crept closer, not sure if she should interrupt.  As she approached the group for a better look she froze.  This was real; this was very real.  The prisoners’ clothes, some of which had once been very fine, were streaked with dirt and sweat.  Meg’s mind shuddered away from the sight of the dark stains on some of the garments. Those had to be blood.  Now that Meg had drawn closer she quickly became aware of the smell emanating from the little group.  It was the stench of unwashed, uncared for humanity. The smell was stomach-wrenchingly real; they reeked.  

      The prisoners were easily outnumbered ten to one by their captors.  They were all quite young, some in their teens and the others young adults.  Their chains seemed to be fairly light.  The lightness of their bonds did not correspond with the heavy guard the prisoners were under or the grim looks that the soldiers cast upon them.  The prisoners’ faces were etched with lines of despair and pain.  They seemed all but broken.  Moreover, they did not look like common felons.  They did not look dangerous and though it was difficult to judge under the grime they all seemed to be otherwise healthy and attractive young people.

      Meg realized that they truly did look broken. Then her eyes were drawn towards the captors.  The guards were dressed in striking red and gold uniforms.  A few were mounted on fine horses, with clean, graceful lines to their carriage.  Most of the guards were on foot.  All wore the badge of a rampant lion on their breast.  Some of the guards carried whips which they occasionally used on their hapless prisoners for no provocation that Meg could see other than a wayward glance or perhaps sheer boredom.   

      The oddest thing about the whole situation, Meg realized, was that although the prisoners had obviously been very ill-treated and were worn down to almost nothing, totally under their guards’ control; the guards seemed to be far more afraid of their charges than vice versa.  It was this fear that the pointless blows tried to hide.  Meg carefully crawled a little closer to where the group had halted.  There seemed to be some sort of consultation going on among a few of the guards.   From the differences in their uniform and by the fact that they were on horseback Meg thought that perhaps these were the leaders of the party.

      One guard, a man with sandy brown hair and earnest brown eyes said to the woman across from him, “Gillian, for the love ‘o God, they canna’ break their bonds, can they?”

      The woman, Gillian, turned cold, appraising eyes on the other soldier.  Both looked older than Meg’s twenty-six years. “Josh, you are either more of an idiot than I thought or a coward, or both.  There’s enough iron in those chains to kill them if we left them on long enough.  As it is, they’re so out of their minds in pain that the bastards can’t hurt us.”  She smiled then, a smile that did little more than stretch the skin of her cheeks and never touched those piercing blue eyes.  Then, almost as an afterthought she added, “And if you ever publicly address me without using the proper titles and respect that my rank demands, then my dear childhood playmate, I am afraid that I will have the scourge used on you.  Perhaps, as an even better example to the others, I should wield it myself.”  She tilted her short-cropped blond head to one side in a gesture that should have been charming as she played with the whip on the side of her saddle, “You understand of course, matter of policy and all that.  Nothing personal, dear.”

       Josh shrank back a bit and stammered, “I, I beg y-y-y-your forgiveness, my Lady Captain.  I was f-f-f-far above myself.” 

       Captain Gillian nodded slightly.  She seemed pleased by his discomfiture.  Then the guardswoman’s clinical gaze scanned the group before her and Meg’s heart sank. She certainly couldn’t escape mounted guards even if she knew where to run.  Meg did not imagine that much escaped those calculating eyes.  Miraculously, those eyes passed right over her hiding place.  Nor did any of the guards’ company seem to notice her as they obeyed Captain Gillian’s terse commands to mount up and move out.

      Puzzled, Meg rose up a bit from where she had been squatting in the dried out, golden grass and tried to ease her aching muscles.  Now from the chest up she was totally exposed and still no one acknowledged her presence.  Could it be that they simply cannot see me, she thought incredulously?  Still very apprehensive but definitely curious (it was after all one of her defining characteristics) Meg walked briskly alongside the group as it started down a worn dirt road on the far side of the clearing.  She was keeping pace far easier than the prisoners were.  The imp in the back of her head was screaming at her, in full-blown Monty Python fashion, “Run away! Run away!” but Meg followed anyway.  As they traveled she looked closely to see what it was about their charges that had frightened Josh and the other guards so badly.

      They certainly looked like a miserable little group.  Tired and gaunt, the criminals, if that is truly what we have here but it must be, thought Meg grimly, seemed too pathetic to do anyone harm.  They were all young.  The youngest was a girl perhaps fourteen or so, whose face beneath the dirt and pain had a delicate birdlike quality to it.  She wore a bedraggled dress that had once been rose.  The fabric was surely some sort of velvet, though it was difficult to say given the garment’s current condition.  Close beside her was a young woman of approximately Meg’s age whose dress had never been fine.  She was sturdily built and she seemed to have fared slightly better than her young companion had.  She occasionally managed to raise her head and look about, which was more than the younger girl could do.  From under dark auburn hair Meg caught a glimpse of brilliant hazel eyes that despite the fact that they were glazed in pain and weariness, still shone brilliantly golden in the late afternoon sun. 

     The rest of the little group was made up of men.  There were four of them.  There were three younger men all in their teens.   Two of them looked like twins with their slender, sensitive faces and their dark hair.  The third was a blond huge enough to play linebacker anywhere he chose.  He did not look like someone that one would want to meet in a dark alley one night, however, in his present cowed position he hardly seemed threatening.  The last prisoner was definitely the oldest of the group.  Even through the filth Meg thought that he was eye-catching, not so much handsome as striking.  He was tall with longish curling golden blond hair and his eyes seemed to be a bluish gray, and though dull with fatigue they shone almost silver. 

      She was so lost in her contemplation of the prisoners that she almost missed the call to halt the Captain gave.  The guards seemed to be spreading out and preparing to set up camp.  Now that the group had halted once more this last prisoner was looking around him with eyes that Meg now saw were actually blue with hazel in them.  Silver or hazel, Meg wondered?  Meg stepped closer for a better look.  She was only a couple of feet away from him when she realized in horror that he was looking directly at her and not through her.  He was actually seeing her, looking straight into her eyes.

     “Who, who are you?” he asked hoarsely.  His voice sounded painfully rusty from disuse.

      A whip cracked out of nowhere and a bloody welt appeared through the dirt on the prisoner’s face, “Havens, who are you talking to, you dirty animal?”  Gillian reined in her horse at his side.  The satisfied smile was back on her face. “I can’t believe that you still have the energy.  No matter, I will take great pleasure in righting that oversight.”  She almost seemed to be purring. “You there, chain this one’s legs, too.”  Meg was thankful that the Captain seemed to have eyes only for the man. She didn’t even glance in Meg’s direction.

     The man screamed only once, a raw hopeless sound, when the thin chains were put on, all the while his eyes bored into Meg’s face.  Meg hastily backed away, trying to hide.  She could feel herself getting sick from the stench, from the suffering and from those hopeless eyes.  She turned as panic seized her and she ran blindly back through the scattered woods and finally collapsed to her knees retching as though she’d never stop.  Dizziness seized her once more and she felt disoriented again.  As at last she straightened up, breathing deeply, almost sobbing she saw that she was completely alone, on the path of her favorite run, under a sky that was now almost totally dark.

      She looked at the path but in the fading light she could only make out one set of footprints, her own. “I must be losing my mind,” she said aloud.  Confused and suddenly very tired, she turned and started the run home.

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     That night her dreams were dark.  They were filled with whips and with the grim-faced soldiers bearing them.  She dreamed of people who carried swords as though they knew how to use them.  Towards morning she saw pain filled eyes looking right at her, eyes that shone silver and gold.