#TeaserTuesday - Blood of Wolves

 I have three main projects I want to put out during the remainder of this year - the beast being Lionheart, which I love, and which I'm seriously wondering if I'll have to split into two volumes in paperback form (Amazon only prints up to 835 pages). Given the sheer size and scope of it, I expect it in the fall.

But before that, we've got Vanish Into Light, the third and final volume in the Hell Theory trilogy (I always reserve the right to return to that world, later), and that's what I've been spending most of my time on the last few weeks. 

Also this year, hopefully late summer, is the third - but not final - installment in the Drake Chronicles. I'm not sure how many books this series will end up being - upwards of five, I'm thinking, because I'm having a blast with it and there's lots to explore - but for now, we'll just focus on book three: Blood of Wolves. This book picks right up where Edge of the Wild left off: in the mountains with Erik and Ollie; in an Aeres under siege; and in Drakewell, with Amelia, and her new sort-of friends, and her pack of dragons. There's so much still to come, and it's going to be fun. 

One of my favorite things so far is getting to write Náli's POV for the first time. 

 

For most, early childhood – those tottering years before the mind began keeping careful record of happenings – was a blur of color, and sense memory, and sound that triggered indistinct recollections later in life, with a few bright, crystal points that stood out, edged in a child’s technicolor wonder. Those were the first memories; the memories that stayed preserved and precious like oil portraits in one’s consciousness. Usually, these memories were of a parent, on older sibling, a nurse or a nanny.

For Náli, it was Mattias.

The image of a boy’s smiling face, his hair already styled like that of a Dead Guard: the head shaved close save for a single, thick stripe down the center of his skull, kept tightly braided at all times, a single tail that slapped against his back when he rode, or slid over his shoulder when he bent over a map to show Náli something. A boy’s smiling face, and a boy’s high, musical laughter; his hand warm and large and safe around Náli’s, as he urged him along. Safe. He’d always been that. Always the cup of warm tea when Náli was flagging; the cloak draped over his shoulders; the insistence on sleep; the strong arms that caught, and lifted, and carried him, when talking to the dead overwhelmed him into unconsciousness.

Always “my lord.” In the voice of a boy, of a teenager, of a man grown, larger, and stronger, and more alive than Náli had ever been, or would ever be.

For two centuries, now, the lords of the Fault Lands – their lives interwoven with the wax and wane of the fire mountain, with the safety of the entire duchy, and even the kingdom – had been guarded from all harm, and doted upon by an elite force of five warriors, selected as boys, raised with their charge the way a sheepdog was raised with lambs. The Dead Guard were trained as knights and assassins both; learned warcraft, and statesmanship at their master’s hand. They took no wives, and fathered no children. When their lord died, they retired to a life of seclusion, in a quiet valley called Naus Fell.

Náli’s Dead Guard were cousins Danski and Darri, Einrih, Klemens. And the captain – a captain since age ten, when he was named to the Guard, Mattias. He knew them all, their faces more familiar than his own reflection, but it was Mattias who’d impressed himself upon a toddling boy of less than a year; who’d scooped him from his crib and toted him around on his hip, as adept as any nursemaid, but more fun, always fun. Always with a story to tell, and a gentle hand cupped round the back of his head when Náli cried. He’d had nightmares his whole childhood, and it was Mattias who’d slipped into bed with him, and held him close, and whispered to him of far-off lands, where it was warm, and the fields danced with flowers, and no one ever had to draw magic out of their bones and wake the dead.

If Mattias had died at Dreki Hörgr, when Ragnar had forsaken them all, then Klemens would become captain, and another Guard chosen to fill the empty space.

If Mattias had died at Dreki Hörgr, Náli was going to dig his corpse from the snow and bring him back, so help all the gods, or he would die trying.