Today’s excerpt is from the beginning of the final book in the Moonstone Chronicles, Blood Ties. This is also the final excerpt I’ll be posting from it, at least for a while. NaNo begins on Sunday, so hopefully next week I’ll be posting a excerpt from my NaNo novel. This year I have two challenges ahead of me – writing a novel in 30 days, and editing one in the same amount of time (or less, even).
Howard Ruskin stared at the object that rested dead center on his work table. It looked like an adder stone, or hag stone. He’d awoken to the sound of a thunderclap and the vision of that very object. It had hovered over his bed and then floated slowly out of the room. He’d followed it, and only when it settled gently on his work table did he realize he wasn’t dreaming.
“Howard . . .” a disembodied voice said. “Activate your scrying bowl.”
A few months ago, Howard would have been horrified at objects floating around his apartment and disembodied voices talking to him. He would have thought seriously about getting some psychiatric help.
But that was before he’d learned that real magic was possible and learned how to use it himself. Before he’d accidentally sent his best friend into a magical realm in another dimension. Before he’d talked with wizards from this other realm by way of the scrying bowl.
With a yawn he went over to the book case and pulled down the bowl he used for scrying. Using his sleeve, he wiped the dust off of it - it had been a while since the bowl had seen any use. His friend Jessica preferred using a mirror to communicate, while Paranithel, the wizard teaching him magic, was in the midst of the Trials - the final examinations for the senior students at his wizard school.
He fingered the moonstone pendant hanging around his neck as he waited for the oil in the bowl to settle. At one time the pendant had been a link to his friend Jessica.... There were actually two parts to it and they each had half, but hers had been lost somewhere in the magical realm.
Jessica, it turned out, was not a native of earth, but of the magical realm. She’d been sent to earth as a baby for her own safety and had grown up not knowing she was adopted nor her magical heritage. Unbeknownst to Howard, when he used Jessica in a teleportation experiment to prove magic was real, her father and grandfather cast a spell at the same time to bring her back to her own universe.
Unfortunately, the spell worked better than anyone had expected and she overshot her mark. Instead of landing in the southern lands close to Thackery and Paran’s magic school, she’d ended up in the Kingdom of Ghren where she met up with the dastardly Prince Ewan.
She escaped his clutches with the help of the bard Sebastian, and was making her way southward when she accidentally turned a thief into a dog and was forced to wait a month before she could change him back. It turned out that Dominic, the thief, was an old friend of Sebastian’s, but before they could continue their journey, Jessica was kidnapped and ended up back in Ghren.
Dominic also turned out to be Ewan’s older brother, who had, thanks to Ewan, disappeared many years before. With the help of some ghosts from the past, Jessica was able to stop Ewan once and for all, and since Dominic didn’t want the job a new king of Ghren was installed.
The last Howard had seen of them, Jessica and Dominic had been getting quite cosy. As for Jessica’s father and grandfather . . . now that he was no longer needed to act as a go-between with Jessica he rarely saw her father, Thackery. But Paranithel, her grandfather, kept the promise he’d made to teach Howard the rudiments of magic that would make the most of what little power he had access to.
The oil in the bowl churned and then cleared to show the face of a beautiful woman with brilliant blue eyes, silver hair, and slender, pointed ears.
“Aracelia!” Howard said in surprise, then added, “Ma’am.”
The Lady Aracelia was Jessica’s fairy grandmother, or to be more precise, her elven grandmother.
“Howard, you are looking well, my friend.”
“Ah, thank you. You’re looking well too. How may I help you?” he asked politely.
“Paran has told me what a promising student of magic you are, but he finds your world’s lack of magic most frustrating.”
“As do I,” Howard admitted. Truthfully, he found it far more than just frustrating.
“I have sent you a talisman imbued with elven magic that should aid you in your lessons. It should last for several months, at which point you have only to contact me and I will re-energize it for you.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Howard said, astonished. “Your generosity humbles me.”
She smiled gently. “You have been a good friend to my granddaughter and I feel somewhat responsible for the loss of your connection to her.”
Unbeknownst to Howard, it had, in fact, been totally her fault. She arranged for Jessica’s half of the amulet to be stolen in order to test her magical abilities. Unfortunately, the amulet, along with the young elf who’d been drafted to steal it, had been lost and Aracelia had been shouldering a double burden of guilt.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
If you want to find out what Howard really does with all that power, you’ll have to wait until the book comes out. :-D
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