Record of the Sentinel Seer: Book One
Adult/Science-Fantasy
Date Published: October 21, 2021
Publisher: True North Press
Abandoned in the wilderness as a child, Lekore lives with ghosts and fallen gods. Everything changes when he summons fire to rescue a traveling princess and her entourage. Wounded, he’s brought to a civilization unlike anything he’s ever known.
Caught in a net of silk and secrets, Lekore finds himself ensnared by court intrigue, midnight assassins, and a deviant faction of the Church of the Sun Gods—all hunting his blood and power.
He just wants to find the man who deserted him, until a storm rises out of the north, furious enough to destroy the city and outlying lands. Now Lekore must find the source of its wrath, deep in the wilds of the deadly Lands Beyond, if only he can flee a city that won’t let him escape.
Prince of the Fallen Excerpt:
“Gods protect me!”
As though in answer to Princess Talanee’s prayer, the flame
of the holy torch leapt into a brilliant, churning arc. Intense heat and a
deafening roar scored the air near her face. Flames encircled her without
touching her skin, then stretched fiery fingers toward the Tawloomez warrior,
who cried out as he and his fellows stumbled backward. They turned tail and
dashed down the steps as the flames gave chase.
Talanee stood stunned, enthralled by the unending flame
shooting up and out from the torch she held in trembling hands. She turned her
eyes upward and found nothing but the brilliant sun in its sky to signify
divine intervention. Could her prayer have worked? A breeze tugged at her hair,
and she glanced down at the battlefield. The arc of fire had reached the bottom
of the tower, and all the Tawloomez warriors cowered, corralled within it.
Talanee started down the steps, gripping the torch in her
hands as it poured forth the terrible wrath of her beloved Sun Gods.
At the bottommost step, she stopped. The Kel soldiers had
flinched back, even Lord Lieutenant Rez, though he held his sword before him.
A breeze breathed across Talanee’s neck, but the fire of the
torch maintained its vigil over the trapped Tawloomez, unerring despite the
rising wind that tossed her hair. She resisted the urge to release the blazing
torch with even one hand. Her eyes followed the trail of her hair in the
sky—and she spotted him.
A figure perched on a ruined wall across from the tower. He
was slender, barely a man, with the palest, longest blue hair she’d ever
beheld, and eyes of red like all the Kel race, but these eyes blazed as though
they held the wreathing fire. A tattered black cloak billowed behind him in the
growing windstorm. One arm rose before him, hand splayed.
As she watched, he snapped his fingers into a fist. The fire
of the torch died. The wreath of flame wisped into smoke and vanished.
The Tawloomez had seen the young man, too. With a cry, one
heathen jabbed his finger toward the stranger. “Akuu! Nu jas Akuu-Ry!”
The Tawloomez stumbled backward, eyes wide, nearly wild,
some dropping their weapons. They fled from the young man, racing northwest.
One stumbled on grit and struck his knees, then dragged himself upright and
sprinted on.
The Kel soldiers, still stunned, didn’t rally to cut off
their retreat.
In the ringing silence that followed, Lord Lieutenant Rez
dragged long strands of blue hair from his perspiring face as he found his
voice. “See to the wounded!”
Talanee released a low breath and let her numb fingers drop
the cold torch. Her eyes returned to the young man upon the ruin. His gaze met
hers across the wide space. His brow creased, and he threw out his hand as the
slap of feet sounded behind her.
She whirled to face a lone, charging Tawloomez, scissor
knife in his hand, its several blades glinting under the dazzling sun. Her
fingers gripped the torch, prepared to brandish it like her missing sword.
The wind changed direction. The strange young man from the
ruin landed on the packed earth beside her, as though he’d taken flight upon
the breeze to reach her.
He lifted a narrow, curved sword against the Tawloomez.
Metal sang across the air as their weapons struck.
The Tawloomez gritted his teeth and spat out the same
foreign phrase, this time like a curse word: “Akuu-Ry!”
The young man took a single step forward, and the
Tawloomez’s brown eyes widened, the green paint of his face shimmering as
though to reflect his fear.
“Leave, Tauw-Nijar, and I shall not do you harm,” said the
young man in lilting tones.
The Tawloomez snarled and threw a long sliver of metal at
Talanee. She yelped and tried to dodge as the young man shoved her aside. The
tiny, glinting object caught his arm. A hiss was all the noise he made, but he
sank to his knees and the sword clattered from his hand.
The Tawloomez sneered and swiped the scissor knife at the
boy’s throat, but an arrow pierced his chest before he met his target. He
grunted and fell, his swinging arm catching the young man’s shoulder, biting
into the flesh in three distinct stripes.
A second arrow sank into the heathen’s chest, and the
warrior crashed backward against the white stone stairs. Blood bloomed across
his snake-bone necklace and down his front. He offered up a last gurgling
breath, then his eyes turned to glass.
Talanee allowed the satisfaction of his passing to shiver
across her skin, then she turned to the young man kneeling beside her. He
looked up to meet her stare, and for a moment Talanee couldn’t move. His eyes
still wielded that strange light like a fire burned within him, yet the clarity
there made her feel as though he had stripped her bare to see every thought,
every lie, every desire, every fear.
His eyes flicked to the dead Tawloomez. His hand snaked out
for his sword near the fallen warrior.
“Don’t touch it. Don’t move.” Rez’s voice rang through the
ruins as he raced across the field, red cape flowing behind him, to join
Talanee and the strange young man. An archer ran with him, another arrow nocked
and aimed at the stranger.
The young man’s fingertips brushed the sword. As Talanee
looked on, the weapon vanished. Gone, as though the very air had swallowed it!
The stranger staggered to his feet. His pale hair, long and
straight, rippled like water as it settled down his back and against his
ankles. He offered a strained smile and raised his arm into the air. The wind
howled, drawing his hair into a whirlwind, carrying the scent of wild things.
He bounded upward, and the wind lifted him into the sky, above the tower, above
the armored soldiers and Sun Priests, above Talanee and the grasslands. He
leapt impossibly high and moved away in an arc, as though he could fly.
“Halt!” Rez slowed his pace and came to a stop beside
Talanee, eyes lifted heavenward as the archer’s second arrow missed its mark.
“By the Sun Gods, what is it we’ve seen?”
Talanee shook her head. “The very will of the Sun Throne,
Lord Lieutenant. What else could it be?”
“Was he real?”
Talanee’s eyes lowered as she sought an answer. Blood
stained the scissor knife lying beside its dead owner. “I think he was.” She
traced a rising sun before her chest. “Sun Gods be praised. I think he was.”
Rez stirred from his watch of the sky. “Should we…try to
complete the ceremony again, Your Highness?”
Talanee glanced at the fallen torch. “I don’t think we have
to, Lord Lieutenant. The rite was already accepted, or we wouldn’t be alive.”
She glanced around for the priests and found several slain, blood staining
their white robes, while the rest cowered beneath the carriages. No one
protested her assumption.
Next time, the Holy Hakija had
better send his Sun Warriors rather than these cowards.
Rez eyed the priests and nodded. “Then we should return to
Inpizal, Your Highness. There are wounded to tend, and we must report all
that’s happened.”
“Of course.” Talanee stooped to pick up the torch. “The king
needs to know. And we should consult the Hakija.” She picked up her hem and
glided toward her carriage, where Keerva and her other handmaids huddled
inside, waiting. Talanee glanced back toward the tower. Her gaze drifted north,
where the young man had vanished in the air.
Would she ever see him again, or had he traveled from the
very Sun Throne to aid her and her people?
About the Author
All of her fantasy worlds connect with each other in a broad Universe, forged with great love and no small measure of blood, sweat, and tears. When she's not writing, she's napping or reading a book with a mug of hot cocoa close at hand while her quirky cat Wynter nibbles her toes.
Learn more at www.mhwoodscourt.com
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