The Ill-Born Prince

 I've got a new fantasy novel!  It's called "The Ill-Born Prince" (that's ILL-BORN, not three-times born or anything like that).  It's about a prince who has discovered he's actually not the son of the king but rather of the queen and the Royal Wizard, and he ends up off studying at the wizards' school.  (I was originally thinking of calling it The Bastard Prince but decided that would be too shocking.)

 

For those keeping score at home, it's number 4 in the "Starlight Raven" series.  That series is also known as the "Yurt, the Next Generation" series.  Here's the cover, and here's the link on Amazon.  It's available both as an ebook on all major ebook platforms and as a paperback (it can be ordered from any bookstore as well as bought directly from Amazon).

Like all the books in the Starlight Raven series, it's narrated by Antonia, daughter of the Master of the wizards' school, and the first young woman ever accepted to study there.  The male wizards are still not totally convinced that a woman magic-worker might not be some kind of dangerous witch, so Antonia has plenty of issues to deal with, not least her relationship to Walther, the ill-born prince.

I've tried to write it so people could enjoy the book without having read any of the others in the series, but you may pick up a few continuing sub-plots from earlier if you have.

Here's the beginning to whet your appetite.

PART ONE - Magical Problems

“Every spell in this book has an error in it,” the teacher told us.  “Something is left out, or steps are transposed, or the words in the Hidden Language are wrong.”
Our class of wizardry students looked at each other, startled, then again at the books on our desks.  This was not some ancient grimoire of half-understood magic scribbled down by an imperfectly trained magician whose wits were already going.  These were freshly printed, clean volumes, each copy identical, that we had just been told would be the fundamental text for our final two years at the wizards’ school.
There was a confused murmur while students tried leafing through the book, looking unsuccessfully for any clues.  Then Walther raised his hand and said, “Excuse me, sir, but why were the errors allowed to remain?  Or,” he hesitated a second, pushing a shock of black hair away from his forehead, “were they deliberate?”
The teacher smiled.  He was one of the older teachers; in the last few years a number of new, younger wizards had joined the school faculty, but he was still teaching.  Like all the older wizards, he always seemed to have a soft spot for Walther.
“Excellent question,” he said.  “And yes, it was deliberate.”  He scanned the room.  “Can any of you think why that should be the case?”
After a moment of uneasy silence, Chlodomer put up his hand.  “It’s an exercise for us.  If we can’t find the errors, it shows we aren’t as good at wizardry as we think we are.”
The teacher nodded, lips pursed.  No one on the faculty had ever had a soft spot for Chlodomer.  Even though he was no longer the awkward, easily startled young man he had been when first entering the school six years ago, even though he had become one of the best students in the technical wizardry division, he had never gotten the respect from the teachers he probably deserved.
For that matter, many of the older teachers were still reluctant to respect me either: the first girl the school had ever taken.
“It’s more than an exercise for you, though of course it could be that as well,” the teacher answered Chlodomer.
“This isn’t the way magic is supposed to work,” one of the students objected.  “This isn’t the way anything works.”
“Indeed,” said the teacher crisply.  “Since you have such a good idea of how everything works, this book will present no challenge for you,” which caused the student to slump back in his chair.
I was distracted, looking out the classroom window toward the school courtyard.  There, among the fountains and the rainbows, lay a crimson flying carpet, twitching as though eager to be off.  Two men were busily loading parcels onto it: a swarthy, enormously fat eastern mage, and with him the white-bearded Master of the wizards’ school.
I wished they were not going.
The teacher interrupted my thoughts.  “Miss Antonia, you usually are full of theories.  What do you think?”
I dragged my attention back to the room and tried not to appear irritated at his patronizing tone. “You’re keeping the most powerful spells from us.  Or if not from us, from the senior students, then from the more junior students.  You don’t want anyone using this magic unless and until you decide we’re worthy to have the missing parts of the spell revealed.”
Now the teacher looked surprised, even, I thought, a little guilty.  “Well, there may be something in that.  After all, it could be dangerous for some of the younger students to read and try to master a spell for which they were not ready.”
Another one of the students spoke up.  “What happens if we try the spell just as it’s written?  What is the danger, exactly?”  He and another young man bumped elbows and grinned at each other.  “Does something, well, inappropriate happen?  Does a winged gorgos appear?  Does the whole school collapse?”
“Not at all,” the teacher said reprovingly.  “If you tried one of these spells as written, it would have no effect.  Other than,” he added darkly, “perhaps blowing up in your face.  As would happen if a junior student tried to alter the spells unwisely.  These are errors that need to be considered carefully.”

© C. Dale Brittain 2024

Is This Apocalypse Necessary?

 As those who read my fiction know, my main fantasy series is "The Royal Wizard of Yurt," six novels plus some novellas and a separate "next generation" series.  The final novel in the series is Is This Apocalypse Necessary?

 

Over the last decade, I've been slowly putting the novels into audio book format, and Apocalypse has just become available, on Audible, iTunes, and Amazon.  These days books can be read (or "read") in a variety of formats, in physical print form, as an ebook (on a computer, smart phone, or e-reader like a Kindle), or as an audio book, and I wanted to make my books available for whatever works best for the reader.  I know a lot of people enjoy audio books on long drives, or while jogging, or even while washing pots and mopping the floor.

The narrator for the whole series is Eric Vincent.  Some authors record their own audio books, but given that Daimbert, the wizard of Yurt who tells the stories, is male but I am not, I really needed a separate narrator.  (To say nothing of the fact that you need professional equipment and a sound studio to do it right.)  Originally it was sort of a shock to hear a voice that isn't the voice in my head doing the first-person narration, but Eric does a terrific job of voicing Daimbert.

For those who would like to try audio books for the first time, here are the Audible links for people in the US and in the UK to get you started.

Or for those of you who prefer a physical book, here's the link to Amazon, which is selling new signed copies.

And if you've never read Apocalypse, here's the opening to give you a taste.

__________________________________________________________________

The midnight knock came sharp and hard.  I had no way of knowing that the knock meant that in two minutes I would be kidnapped and in three weeks dead.

I rolled over, too sleepy to bother with a spell.  It had to be, I thought vaguely, someone from here in the castle, so eager for my wizardly wisdom that he couldn’t wait until morning.  “Mmm?”

The knock came again.  “Come in,” I mumbled, not recalling for the moment how rarely my wisdom was sought this eagerly.  “The door’s unlocked.”

It slowly creaked open, letting in a cool, damp wind but at first nothing else.  It was the darkest hour of the night, the hour when it seems that the sun must this time be gone for good, and the furniture has taken advantage of its absence to metamorphose into something large and predatory.  I sat up, abruptly wide awake.  Through the doorway stepped a pair of hooded figures, barely visible in the shadows.

Just inside, they paused to light a magic lamp, but their hoods hid their faces from the lamp’s glow.  The aura of wizardry emanated from them like heat from a stove.  Two strange wizards, in a kingdom where I was the only one?  My heart slammed against my ribs as I scrambled belatedly for a spell.

“Don’t struggle, Daimbert,” said one, “and don’t make a sound.”  His was no voice I recognized, though he seemed to know who I was.  “Is anyone here with you?”

“No!” I said loudly and stretched out a hand, adding the two quick words that should have knocked them flat.  The words had no effect.

Instead a loop of air around my chest suddenly became solid.  They were using a binding spell on me.
I struggled to free myself, but with two of them joining their magic together I didn’t have a chance.  The binding spell held me tighter than any rope and kept my mouth closed, so I could do no more than thrash and make inarticulate grunts as they advanced toward the bed.

“We told you not to struggle, Daimbert,” said one reprovingly.  “And stop making that sound before we have to paralyze you, too.  Good thing we practiced our binding spells before we came!”

So they wanted me alive.

________________________________________________________________________________

© C. Dale Brittain 2023

The Sapphire Ring

 I've published a new book!  As with all of my fiction, there's plenty of magic interspersed with elements of medieval culture.  This one is entitled The Sapphire Ring, and it's the third in the "Starlight Raven" series, also known as "Yurt, the Next Generation."  It's available as an ebook on Amazon (link here).  A paperback version is also available, and ebook versions on other major platforms are also available (B&N-Nook, Kobo, iTunes).  Here's the cover.  Note the badger and the chicken-legged house in the background.

 

Antonia, daughter of a witch and a wizard, continues trying to find a way to combine men's and women's magic, the heritage of both her parents, which is difficult because male and female magic-workers distrust each other thoroughly.  She has been touched by the Starlight Raven, which may mean she is prophesied to save her people, but she doesn't believe in prophecy, and she isn't even sure who "her" people are.  Meanwhile, she's just turned 18, too late to be a girl, not quite ready to be a woman.

Here's the opening, to give yourself a taste:

I

“I know who you are.”
It took me a moment to locate the voice in the middle of a loud and busy market.  But then I saw her, an old woman with a face wizened like last year’s apple, but with eyes of piercing blue.  At one time I would have called her a witch.
But I was a witch too, a member of the Sisterhood, and we didn’t use that word.  It was a word that men attached to us.
“You’re the one they call the Starlight Raven.”  She motioned me toward her, where she sat behind a table scattered with herbs tied together with string or twisted into a paper cone.
I turned to look out across the market, to where my Guide in the Sisterhood was negotiating for a new cooking pot.  She appeared fully occupied, laughing and gesturing, her long black hair swirling around her.  Half the men in the market were staring at her, and no one was looking at me.
I went over and sat down next to the old woman.  “My name is Antonia, but I’m afraid I don’t know yours.”
She smiled, flashing a gold tooth, but did not answer.  On her knee sat a little girl who gave me a long and serious look.  Probably age two or three, I thought.  I tried smiling at her, but she did not smile back.
“My granddaughter,” said the old woman, nodding at the girl.  “She likes to come to the market with me.  Her mother is probably glad to have a chance to be on her own for a few hours.”
For a moment I felt a pang—jealousy? wistfulness?  I had never known either of my grandmothers.  Had my mother ever wanted to be on her own?  If so, she had never said so—and I had never thought to ask.
But if she’d wanted a chance to live her life without a girl’s presence, then she had had her fill the last four years, while I was off with my Guide learning the ways of the Sisterhood or else studying at the wizards’ school.
“We’ve not given her a name yet,” the old woman continued.  “But Antonia is a good name.  We could name her for you.”
It took me a startled moment to respond.  This woman and child suddenly seemed very alien.  How could one leave a little girl nameless?  It seemed almost to be saying she was not fully human.  I had been baptized when just a few days old—unlike most Sisters, who tried to avoid the church and its male priests as much as they avoided wizardry and the male wizards, but who still had the sense to give their babies names.
“But best not to tell her it’s your name,” the old woman added, “the Starlight Raven, the one who either saves her people or who leads them into final destruction.”
I stiffened but tried to hide it.  Better cut short any notion of some prophecy.  “You can name her Antonia if you like,” I said, trying not quite successfully to chuckle, “but I’m not going to save anyone, much less lead them into destruction.  That’s just a story.”  A story I had almost believed back when I had first heard it, when the strange giant raven with stars glinting among its feathers had flown to me.  But I had only been fourteen at the time.
The old woman reached under her table and pulled out a pack of battered cards.  Her piercing blue eyes held mine.  “Let’s see what the cards have to say to that,” she said, looking amused, as though knowing far more about me than I did.  The voices and clamor of the market were all around us, but here with the old woman, her granddaughter, and her dried herbs, we seemed almost in a little private, quiet island.
She handed me the cards to shuffle.  They felt slick from much handling, edges and corners notched and nicked.  They were larger than the cards to which I was accustomed, and the deck felt thicker.
Both the old woman and her granddaughter kept their eyes on me as I shuffled.  “You’re a woman grown, Antonia,” she commented.  “You cannot deny your future much longer.”
She took the deck back and started dealing them out, face down.  “Earth, air, fire, and water,” she said in a low voice, dealing onto four piles.  “I mind you, I bind you, I call you out, from among the living, from among the dead.”
The hair on the back of my neck rose.  For the second time I thought:  This is a witch.
“Here is your birth, here is your death,” she intoned, slightly louder.  “Here is your loss, here is your love.  And here,” slapping down the next card so hard it bent, “are you.  Turn it and read your fortune.”
A fortune-teller, I told myself firmly, trying to steady my hand as I reached for the card.  Fortune-tellers picked up a few coins at fairs, telling the girls they would meet a handsome stranger, telling the boys they would fall hopelessly in love with someone unattainable, warning both not to trust false friends.  This woman was no different.  Why would I even think she had some ability to see beyond the world around us?
I turned the card.  It showed a young girl, standing in a flowering meadow and smiling.  “The Maiden,” said the old woman complacently.  “I expected that one to show.”
The Maiden was blonde.  I was brunette, chestnut-colored hair my father called it.  Good, I thought.  I don’t have to believe anything else.
“The Maiden,” she repeated, almost in a sing-song.  “A woman grown, yet still a little girl.  Eager for her independence, but almost afraid of it too.”
I was not afraid of anything, or at least not of independence, I told myself.
The little girl had been watching the cards with interest.  Now she gave a sudden and unexpected grin.
“Choose a card from the first pile,” the old woman continued, pointing with a gnarled finger.  Were these supposed to be the cards of Earth?  Or of my birth?  I had seen a few other fortune-tellers, but they had not told the cards like this.  I slipped a card from the middle of the pile and turned it over.
It was hard at first to tell what the card represented.  This really was like no deck I had ever seen.  There seemed to be all sorts of little symbols, drawn very small, in among swirling lines that might have indicated a wind storm.
But the old woman did not hesitate.  “This surrounds you,” she said.  “Magic.  Wild magic, tamed magic, magic in all its forms.  You are brimful of magic, maiden girl.”  She paused, then added, not quite as confidently, “I would have expected rather the card of the Sisters, or perhaps the Mother, to indicate our magic.”
She might think I was the Starlight Raven, but she clearly did not know I had been learning men’s magic as well as women’s.  Emboldened, I pointed at the second little pile of cards.  “So what does Air show?”
“Here we will see what crosses you,” she said, “what forces oppose you.  Choose your card.”  I took the top one.
This time it was “the Sisters.”  I recognized them at once, three young women, nearly identical although wearing different colored dresses, standing and smiling in the same meadow.  This time they were brunettes.
I showed the card to the little girl, since she seemed interested.  She nodded emphatically.
“I had not expected that card,” said the old woman slowly.  This showed there was nothing special about her fortune-telling—or so I told myself.  The first card, the Maiden, she would have known from its back, from long familiarity with the deck, but she had no control over which card I pulled from her little piles.
Whatever opposed me, it could not be the Sisterhood.  I had spent every summer with my Guide, learning the Sisters’ ways, since I turned fourteen.
And now they were supposed to be my death?
The old woman took a deep breath.  “The cards will all become clearer as we continue.  Choose from the cards of Fire.  This shows what is behind you.”
I hesitated, fingering the cards’ broken edges, then pulled one out from near the bottom of the pile.  The woman sighed as I turned it over.
The card showed a flock of crows swooping down into a field of grain.  “The Raven!” she pronounced.
Those weren’t ravens.  Those were crows.  And none of them had stars glinting among their feathers.  That she would try to pass off a flock of crows as the great black bird who had once landed on my shoulder showed she had already decided what she wanted to tell me, and she was going to force her cards to say it.
One pile remained.  “The full story will be revealed now,” she said.  “The card of Water will show what is before you.”
I still didn’t understand entirely how this was supposed to work.  Four piles of cards, earth, air, fire, and water, except the cards didn’t seem to have anything to do with the elements.  She had said they represented birth, death, loss, and love, but it wasn’t clear if those aspects were associated with the separate piles or the overall reading from all the cards.  But apparently the individual cards represented what was around me, against me, behind and before me.
It was going to be interesting to see how she made this into a coherent prophecy.  I reached for the final pile.
As I ruffled through the thick and slightly greasy cards, one slid out into my hand.  I turned it over.
If I’d had any doubts, now I really knew there was nothing here.  The card showed a majestic woman, sitting on a throne, a scepter in her hand and a jeweled crown on her head.  Whatever lay before me, it was not becoming a queen.
The old woman tugged at her lip.  “Magic, the Sisters, the Crows, and the Queen,” she said, half to herself.  I’d known that card was crows.  “The Maiden is facing many challenges here, but a future, with the Starlight Raven as the base….”

Happy reading!

© C. Dale Brittain 2021

The Witch and her Daughter

I've got a new paperback!

It's an omnibus edition of the fourth and fifth books in the Yurt series, The Witch and the Cathedral and Daughter of Magic.  It's for sale on Amazon (link here) and coming soon to other bookstores.  (It's also available as an ebook, offered through Amazon at a discount price compared to buying the two novels separately.)

It's a companion volume to My First Kingdom, which was an omnibus of the first three Yurt novels.  These five books were originally all published by Baen as mass-market (small size) paperbacks twenty-five years ago, and if you bought them then they're probably falling apart by now.  These are trade (large size) paperbacks on sturdier paper.

If of course you've never read any of the Yurt books, what are you waiting for?  A Bad Spell in Yurt (the first one) can also be bought as a free-standing trade paperback or as an ebook on Amazon and all other major ebook platforms.  All five of these books are available both as ebooks and audiobooks.

And then there's the series' boffo finale, Is This Apocalypse Necessary? available both as its own trade paperback or as an ebook, and Third Time's a Charm, a collection of three novellas (short novels) that take place in between the main books (available ditto).

So refresh your shelves with new editions, or get started on your holiday shopping!  (If a girl can't promote her own books, whose books can she promote?)

The two novels in The Witch and Her Daughter are all about female magic-workers, confounding (or confusing) the male wizards, especially the wizardly narrator.  The books are surprisingly intense.  When I was formatting the paperback, I had to keep stopping to take a breath.  On the other hand, there are also some very funny parts, like the comment, "I've noticed this before. The Earth never opens up and swallows you when you need it to."

Here's the opening to give you a taste:

PART ONE - THE CATHEDRAL

That morning I thought my main problem was the three drunk newts.  But that was before I got the telephone call from the chaplain.  He was not in fact the chaplain any more, but then a minute ago the newts had been three drunk students.

I had been sitting in on Zahlfast's class at the wizards' school.  He paused in his description of the basic transformation spell to explain the dangers inherent in its use.  Any magic spell, even illusions, can have repercussions far beyond the expected, and advanced spells if not done properly can lead to loss of identity or even life.

The three drunk wizardry students, sitting together and laughing quietly in the back, had apparently decided to test for themselves what these dangers might be.

We dived for the newts before they had a chance to disappear into cracks in the floor.  "Hold onto those two, Daimbert," said Zahlfast.  "I'll start on this one."

The newts wiggled in my hands as I tried to hold their smooth bodies gently.  The loss of a tail or a leg as a newt would mean permanent damage to the student as a human, and if they escaped as newts we might never be able to return them to themselves.  They were quite attractive, light green with bright red spots, but their tiny newt eyes looked up at me with human fear.

The rest of the class had retreated to the back of the room.  Zahlfast glared at them.  "What are you waiting for?  This is all the demonstration you'll get today."  The students left in some confusion, and he returned to his spell.

It is harder to undo someone else's spell than one of your own.  As I started on one of the newts I was holding, Zahlfast finished with his, and suddenly a student stood before him, or rather slumped.  He was slightly green, but I think that was from feeling ill rather than the after-effects of being a newt.
I finished with mine and handed the third to Zahlfast.  "How can they be drunk so early in the day?  I didn't think the taverns down in the City were even open yet."

Zahlfast spoke the final words in the Hidden Language to break the spell.  "Bottles in their rooms," he said as the last dazed and frightened newt became a dazed and frightened wizardry student.

"We never had bottles in our rooms when I was a student here," I said self-righteously.

Zahlfast looked at me sideways, a smile twitching the corner of his mouth.  "As I recall, you had plenty of trouble at the transformations practical exam, even perfectly sober."

I preferred not to recall all my embarrassment with those frogs, even twenty years afterwards, so I loftily ignored this comment.  I had, after all, become a perfectly competent wizard in the meantime—or at least had managed to persuade the wizards' school of my abilities enough that they had invited me back for a few months as an outside lecturer.

"Now," said Zahlfast to the students.  "Are you sober enough to listen to reason?"

"Spill a spell, spoil a spell," blurted one and collapsed on his face.  I was interested to see that they still excused themselves for magical mixups with the same catch-phrase we had used years ago.

© C. Dale Brittain 2018

The Lost Girls and the Kobold

I've got a new audio book!

It's the audio version of the first of the Yurt novellas and is entitled "The Lost Girls and the Kobold."  It is about, big surprise, missing girls and a kobold.  Daimbert, the wizard hero, has to find the girls, figure out why and how they disappeared, and deal with the magical forces of the kobold, before rather than after generations-old legends come to horrifying life.  The narrator of the audio book is the same terrific guy who has narrated all the Yurt books so far, Eric Vincent.

It's available from Amazon, Audible, and iTunes, and if you sign up for a new Audible membership, you can get it free.  (You can also just buy it.)  Here the link on Amazon.

In my own head, of course, Daimbert, the first-person narrator, sounds like me, but Eric does a far better job of professionally narrating an audio book than I ever could.  He's now at work on "Is This Apocalypse Necessary?" the sixth and last of the main Yurt series of novels, though there are still two more Yurt novellas I'm hoping to get him to do.

The book mostly takes place in steep, rocky mountains, which is why I have mountains on the cover.  (The picture is of the real Rocky Mountains in Wyoming.  Shhh, don't tell anyone.)

Audio books are becoming more popular, something people can "read" while commuting, jogging, sweeping the floor, sitting in the same room as someone who wants to watch a football game in which you're not interested....  You can even listen for a while and read the ebook for a while, then switch back and forth.

Here's the opening, to give you a taste.

________________________________________________________________________

“She put on her best dress, walked out the door and up into the mountains without a word to anyone, and has not been seen since.”

“So how long ago was this?” I asked cautiously.  The woman in front of me had the worn, rangy look of someone who had worked too hard for too much of her life, but her eyes were large, dark, and compelling.  She pushed back a strand of graying hair with a hand red and rough and held my gaze with hers.

My first mistake had been agreeing to talk to her.  My second would be trying to dismiss her.

“Two days.”  She put her hands on her hips.  “A girl can go off with her young man for one day, but not for two.”

“And you expect me to find her?”  A few men with dogs, I thought, could find the girl far faster than I could.  But somehow, with her looking at me intently, I couldn’t manage to say it out loud.

“You’re a wizard, aren’t you?  What else is a Royal Wizard for?”

I could have made several answers.  A Royal Wizard is responsible for protecting his kingdom from dragons and demons.  A Royal Wizard keeps overly energetic knights from killing each other.  A Royal Wizard provides illusions to entertain the court over dinner.

And is bound by great oaths sworn on magic itself to use his powers to help others.  Some within organized wizardry might have made dismissive comments about the extent of my own powers, but I was the only Royal Wizard the kingdom of Yurt had.

“I’ll come right away, of course,” I said, doing my best not to sound resigned.  “You’ll have to show me where she disappeared.”

© C. Dale Brittain 2018