Category Archives: Senta and the Steel Dragon

The Young Sorceress – Chapter 14 Excerpt

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Augie Dechantagne came running through the parlor and like a freight train.  “Mama!  Mama!  I shot a velociraptor!”  He dived toward the couch, landing not on his mother, but instead in the lap of Cissy who sat next to her.

“You did what?”

“I shot a velociraptor!”

Yuah’s eyes shot daggers at the boy’s uncle, who followed him into the room, and who was in turn followed by a lizzie burdened with at least six assorted rifles and another with several large canvas bags slung over his shoulder.  “He’s not even three years old.”

“Don’t get yourself worked up,” said Radley Staff.  “I didn’t give him the weapon.  I simply let him look through the sights and pull the trigger while I held it.”

“Quite appropriate,” said Iolanthe from her seat across the room, her eyes glued to the paper in her hand.  “”A Dechantagne man must be proficient in firearms.”

“You should have seen the blood shoot out!” continued the boy.  “How many did we get again, Uncle?”

“Only four,” said Staff, who then turned to the lizzies.  “Put the gear away in my den.”

“I hope you at least made sure the guns were unloaded in the house,” said Yuah.

“I certainly hope you didn’t.”  Iolanthe at last looked away from her paper.  “What’s the point in having rifles if they aren’t ready to be used?”

“Yuah is right,” said Staff.  “Safety first.  But the best way to be safe is to ensure the children have a good working knowledge of firearms and know when and when not to touch them.”

“Ready for a nap?” Cissy asked the boy.  “Sister is already asleep.”

“I’m hungry,” said the boy.  “Can I get a biscuit?”

“Go get one from the kitchen,” ordered his mother.  Then she stood up.  “I certainly can use a nap.  I shall see you all at tea.”

Making her way up the long sweeping staircase, Yuah snapped her fingers at Narsa, who followed her into her bedroom and helped her remove her day dress and then unfasten her corset.  Waving for the lizzie to go, she unfastened her own hip bag and draped it over the chair, before stretching out on the bed.

“What are you still doing here?” she called, seeing the lizzie out of the corner of her eye.  “Oh, it’s you again.”

It wasn’t Narsa hovering just outside Yuah’s bedroom door, but Cissy.  She seemed to be making a habit of hovering outside doors.

“What do you want?  I’m not doing anything.”

“I whatch you,” said Cissy.

“Yes, yes,” replied Yuah.  “Go ahead and ‘whatch’ me.”

The Drache Girl – Radley Staff

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Radley Staff is a minor character in the series, but in this one book, takes the part of a major character.  While I really like him, it is only in this part of the story that he really needs to stand out.

One month later, as the winter wind whipped through his blond hair, Radley Staff climbed up the long rope ladder to the deck of the cruise ship S.S. Arrow.  The launch which had carried him from the Superb turned, and the stout seamen rowed it back across the choppy sea.  At the top of the ladder, he climbed through the opening in the railing and stepped onto the deck.  The purser was there to greet him.

“Welcome aboard.  Glad to have you with us, Commander Staff.”

“It’s just Mr. Staff now.”

“Yes, of course.  The captain has asked me to inform you that even though we only have a second class cabin available for you, you will have access to all the first class amenities.”

“That’s very nice.  Thank you.”

The purser smile broadly.  “The cabin boy will show you the way.”

“Thank you.”

The cabin boy, a lad of about ten years, lifted Staff’s duffle bag to his shoulder, and headed across the damp deck toward an open hatch.  Unlike the hatches on the battleship, this one resembled the door of a building.  Staff followed the youth inside and then down three narrow sets of stairs, up a long narrow corridor and finally through another door into a small room.  At six feet wide and sixteen feet long, the second class cabin was actually larger than the first officer’s quarters on Superb.  The boy sat the duffle bag next to the bed, and Staff handed him a silver ten pfennig piece.  Saluting, the boy left, closing the door after him.

Staff sat down on the edge of the bed.  Pulling the duffle bag strings open, he reached in and pulled out the pieces of his wardrobe, setting them on the bed beside him.  He had made his way about halfway to the bottom, when he reached his shaving kit.  Sitting atop of it was the letter.  He looked at it for a moment, and then unfolded it.  The fold lines were so pressed into the paper now that they seemed the most permanent part of it.  The ink was faded, but still legible.

 

Dear Lieutenant Staff,

I wanted to let you know that I will be marrying soon.  Please do not write and please do not return.  I wish things could have been different.  Good-bye.

Sincerely,

Iolanthe.

 

He must have read it forty five thousand times, but he read it again anyway.  Thirty five words.  Not a lot of wasted ones.  Not a lot of wasted emotion, either.  He folded the letter back up and placed it along with his shaving kit, on the small vanity next to the bed.  Taking out the last of his clothes, he put his socks in the single drawer, left the rest of his clothing sitting on the bed, and taking his extra pair of shoes, he stood up and stepped out the door of the cabin.  He placed his shoes in the hallway by the door and walked up the hallway toward the ships bow.

He had passed five or six cabins when one of the doors opened and a cabin boy stepped out.  Staff wasn’t sure if it was the same boy who had escorted him to his own cabin.  The boy looked up.

“I need my clothes pressed,” said Staff.

“Yes, Sir.  Cabin?”

“213.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“And which way is the first class lounge?”

“Straight ahead, Sir.  Up the first staircase on your right.  Royal deck.  Third one up.”

“Thanks.”

Staff followed the boy’s directions and found the first class lounge with no problem.  Though he wore a new suit that he had purchased in Nutooka, he felt decidedly underdressed.  The dozen people in the spacious room already wore their evening clothes though it was only sixteen hundred hours.  Four PM, he mentally corrected himself.  A beautiful raven haired woman, in an iridescent purple taffeta ball gown with beaded and sequined trim sat at the piano, playing a wistful tune.

The Drache Girl – Honor Hertling

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I often congratulate myself on my minor characters in Senta and the Steel Dragon.  I flatter myself that some of them are very creative and interesting.  One of my favorites is Honor Hertling.

Honor Hertling was dressed in the same sturdy brown and white clothing as her neighbors.  Her sleeves and the front of her dress were stained with dirt, and she wore a beat up pair of men’s work gloves.  Twenty years old, with large, sad eyes, a small nose, and raven hair, she was not classically beautiful, and not just because of the ugly scar that ran across her left cheek to her chin.  She was cute though, in an indefinable way.  Yuah reached out to take her gloved hand.

“Oh, sorry,” said Miss Hertling.  She pulled her hand away and removed the glove, then grasped Yuah’s hand firmly.  “What a lovely dress.”

“You like it?  A little bird told me that you might not approve.”  Yuah was suddenly aware that she was using one of Iolanthe’s expressions.

“Mein sister and her friend.”  Miss Hertling’s accent suddenly became thicker.  “I am thinking that the Drache girl likes to stir up trouble.  Would you like to come in for some tea?”

“Thank you.”

Tossing her gloves onto a potting bench near the garden, the young woman opened the door.  Yuah parked the blue baby carriage in the yard and lifting little Augie out, followed into the house.  The structure was very small and consisted of three rooms.  The front room, only about eight by twelve feet, served as parlor, dining room, and kitchen, as well as any number of other functions for which the Dechantagne household would have had individual rooms.  From the cast iron stove at one end of the room to the shelf filled with canned goods at the other, the room was impeccably clean.  A single bookcase contained a dozen volumes and was home to two small porcelain vases holding cut flowers.  Bright light shown in through the lace curtained windows.  Augie began to fuss as Yuah stepped inside.

“He’s probably hungry again,” she said.

“If you would like to nurse him now, you may sit in the rocking chair, while I make our tea.”

Yuah set the swaddled baby on the chair as she went about the fairly arduous task of freeing her breasts from the many layers of her clothing.   Though two of her three undergarments had been fashioned with breast-feeding in mind, the gorgeous teal dress had not.  By the time Augie was able to begin suckling, he was red-faced from crying and his mother was nearing exhaustion.  Yuah pulled the suddenly quiet baby close to her body, now bare from the waist up, and reached with a free hand to accept the cup of steaming tea.  Miss Hertling turned the lock on the door, which consisted of a small piece of wood with a single nail holding it to the doorjamb. 

 “I wouldn’t want Hertzal walking in on you,” she explained.  “I think he might faint.”

The Young Sorceress – Chapter 12 Excerpt

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A full complement of diners surrounded the Dechantagne table for the first time in a great while.  Radley Staff sat at the head of the table, his wife on his right hand and his daughter on his left.  Looking proudly from his spot directly opposite his uncle was Augie Dechantagne, a stack of books between his chair and his bottom.  His mother sat on his right hand and his sister, in her high chair, on his left.  Filling in the seats between Iolanthe and Terra were Mrs. Colbshallow and her son and daughter-in-law.  On the other side of the table were Cissy and two guests—Honor Hertling and her little sister Hero.

“How wonderful to have us all together,” said Staff, waving for one of the servants to start filling the soup bowls.

“It will make for a lovely Oddyndessen,” said Honor Hertling.

“For a what?”

“It’s a Zaeri holy day,” said Yuah, her eyes never quite moving up from the table.  “We don’t really celebrate it anymore in Brechalon.”

“Well, how lovely,” said Mrs. Colbshallow.  “It’s always wonderful to learn new things.”

“Should we…” said Staff.  “Would you… Is a prayer appropriate, considering?”

“We don’t usually do that,” said his wife, drumming her fingers on the table.

“Surely it can’t hurt… guests and all.”

“I could offer a simple prayer,” said Honor, and when Staff gave a nod that she should continue, she closed her eyes and intoned, “Great Lord, as you did with Odessah before his great journey, give us your blessings on this day.  Amen.”

“In Kafira’s name, Amen,” said Loana Colbshallow, making the sign of the cross.

She was followed about three ticks later by both her husband and mother-in-law.

The lizzies quickly served onion soup.  This was followed by a fruit and cress salad.  As soon as the salad plates had been removed, the servants began placing the main course.  Mrs. Colbshallow, though of course knowing nothing of Oddyndessen, had put together as fine a meal as she ever had.  A large pork roast was the center point, though there was also poached fish.  Pudding, peas, chips, and roasted mixed vegetables were placed on overflowing plates around the table.

“Wonderful as always mother,” said Saba Colbshallow.

“I think you’ve outdone yourself mother dear,” said his wife.

“Here, here,” agreed Staff.  “Dearest?”

“The problem is Mrs. Colbshallow,” said Iolanthe.  “Your meals are always so perfect.”

Everyone at the table sat staring, not sure if there was more to come, and not sure whether this was intended as an insult or a compliment.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Colbshallow after a minute.  She turned to Honor Hertling.  “It’s a shame that your brother couldn’t attend.”

“Yes.  He sends his regrets, but two ships came into port today, so he was needed at the docks.  I hear that the lizzies have begun to move back in to Lizzietown, General Staff.”

“Yes, some of them have.  It’s just Mr. Staff.”

“Some are moving back into town,” said Iolanthe.  “But I have let it be known that these savage witch doctors will not be tolerated.”

She turned and stared at Yuah, but her sister-in-law never looked up from the table.  Yuah just sat and absentmindedly moved the peas around her plate with her fork.

The Young Sorceress – Chapter 11 Excerpt

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“What’s your man?” asked Augie Dechantagne as he slid his wooden playing piece, marked to resemble a utahraptor forward to attack a similar wooden piece controlled by his cousin Iolana.

“Drache Girl,” she said.

“No fair!” he cried.  “That’s supposed to be your lizzie witch doctor.”

“No, he’s over here.”  She pointed to another wooden square several inches closer to her.  “I moved him when you were eating all my lizzies with your tyrannosaurus.”

“I’m not playing anymore!”

“It’s just as well,” said Iolana, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes.  “You know you can’t win when I have the Drache Girl.”

“Yuh huh.  What if I have Hoonan Matriarch?”

“What if I have Insane Witch Woman?” the girl countered, sliding her glasses back into place on her button nose.

“Tonahass Ssotook,” he snarled.

Iolana slapped him across the cheek.  Insane Witch Woman was a powerful piece that guaranteed victory for its owner, but that was no excuse for such profanity.  Augie jumped to his feet, tears escaping his already full eyes, and ran from the room, but not before kicking the little wooden squares across the rug.  The girl set about gathering the pieces all up and putting them back into their cloth bag.  She was just finishing as her aunt Yuah entered the parlor and sat down on the sofa.

“Good morning, Aunt Yuah.”

“Come here,” ordered her aunt, as she sat down.  “Let me see your new dress.”

Iolana sat the game on the coffee table and standing in front of the woman, twirled around.  Her shin-length red dress with a trim of yellow bows was spread out around her by the three petticoats beneath it.

“Yes, you look just darling.”  Yuah, reached out and adjusted a red bow in flowing locks of blond hair.  “What do you think of it?”

“I love it,” said the girl.  “It’s even nicer than the dresses that Mama buys for me.  Thank you.”

“Well, if you are going to grow up to be a princess, you must look the part, mustn’t you?”

“I have no desire to be a princess, Aunt Yuah.”

“You have no desire… What kind of five year old child talks that way?  What kind of little girl doesn’t want to grow up to be a princess?  What exactly do you want to be then?”

“I want to go to Brech City and attend at St. Dante University,” said Iolana.  “I’m going to read every book ever written and be a professor of literature.”

“I never heard of anything so ridiculous.  Women do not become professors of anything, let alone professors of literature.”

“Tonahass Ssotook,” muttered the girl.

The smack of her aunt’s palm meeting her cheek echoed throughout the lower floor of the mansion.

Upstairs in the nursery, Cissy sat on the wooden toy box, Augie curled up in her lap, as she rocked the cradle containing little Terra back and forth.  She looked from one to the other.  The little girl was almost too big for the cradle.  In fact she was almost too big for her baby bed.  Soon the family would have to bring in a grown up human bed and convert the nursery to a bedroom.  The boy’s tears had stopped and now he absentmindedly played with the lizzie’s dewlap as she hissed soothingly to him.  He was already too big for the nursery and his uncle was converting the room in the far back corner of the house into a suitable boy’s room.  It had already been outfitted wood paneling and a gold rug.  A dresser, a desk, and chair had been moved in, and several stuffed dinosaur heads had been mounted on the wall.

Yuah passed the doorway heading toward her bedroom.  Cissy shifted and Augie leaned back and looked up at his nurse.

“Go down and tlay with Iolana,” said Cissy.

“I don’t want to.  I don’t like her anymore.”

“Little hoonan say wrong words.  Little hoonan know it.  Tell her sorry.”

“I’m not sorry.  She wasn’t playing fair.”

“Tell her sorry.  She loves little hoonan.  He loves her.”

“No I don’t,” he said, but got up and stomped out of the nursery.

Cissy stood and stepped through the doorway, but instead of following the boy down the sweeping staircase, she turned right toward Yuah’s bedroom door.  She gently turned the doorknob, not surprised to find it locked.  Lifting the knob up with both hands, she bumped the door with her shoulder.  It opened and she stepped inside.

“Get out you…” Yuah started.  She was lying on her bed, her head propped up on two pillows, with a small glass vial of blue liquid in her hands.  “Oh, it’s you.  Don’t bother me.  I want to be alone.”

Cissy crossed the distance in the blink of an eye, snatched the tiny bottle from her hands and threw it across the room.  It dashed to pieces against the cold stones of the unused fireplace.

“You stupid bloody bitch!”  Yuah jumped to her feet on the bed.  “That was two hundred marks!”

Suddenly her eyes jumped toward the small nightstand beside the bed.  Cissy followed her eyes to see a small wooden box with several more of the tiny vials.  They both jumped for the little box, but the reptilian was quicker.  With a swift motion, it too flew into the fireplace, the box breaking apart and the bottles all smashing to pieces.

Yuah let out a cry halfway between a scream and a growl and jumped onto Cissy’s shoulders.  The lizzie easily pulled her away and tossed her on the bed.  With a quick backward kick, she shut the door.  Then she grabbed the woman by the shoulder and dragged her to her feet.

“I’ll kill you, you stupid lizzie.”

“No!” hissed Cissy.  “Kill yourself!  Kill yourself with staahstiachtio.  Yuah whant to die?  I do it for you now!”

She pressed a claw-tipped finger against the skin right between the woman’s eyes.

“Yuah whant to die?”

Yuah whimpered and then sobbed.  “Go ahead.  Do it.”

“Is it what you whant?  Whant Augie to be orphan?  Terra?  Grow with no…”

Yuah broke down into uncontrollable weeping.  Cissy let her go and she wilted down onto the bed, where she lay crying.

Someone pounded on the door.

“What’s going on in there?” called Mrs. Colbshallow.

“You whant Augie and Terra to live like lizzies with no family?  You have to not staahstiachtio.  None.  None.”

“I can’t do it!” wailed Yuah.  “I want to do it, but it’s too hard.  It’s too hard.  Just kill me.  Just kill me.”

“No,” said Cissy.  “Yuah whill do it.  Yuah whill do it for Augie and Terra.  There whill be no more staahstiachtio.  None.”

Yuah looked up at her through bloodshot eyes.

“None,” said Cissy.  “Yuah say it.  None.”

 

The Young Sorceress – Chapter 10 Excerpt

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Isaak Wissinger leaned over the ship’s railing and stared down into the dark blue water.  He wasn’t the only one.  Dozens of other passengers on the S.S. Waif des Vaterlands were lined up to watch as half a dozen giant turtles, each larger than a kitchen table swam along apparently oblivious to the steel vessel chugging past them.  They were large, but not nearly as amazing as the writer had expected, having heard for years legends of the monsters to be found in Mallon.

After leaving his employment with Herr Fuhrmann, Wissinger had taken the train from Butzbach to Friedaport, where he had worked on the docks until he had enough accumulated wealth to book passage, steerage class, to Mallontah.  This had taken him several months, but at last he had set sail.  Now, he had been on the ship for forty five days.  His daily meals consisted of porridge in the morning, a piece dried tack for lunch, and for supper a soup made of beans and rancid pork.  It was infinitely better that his diet in the ghetto had been.

“Herr Holdern?”

It took Wissinger a moment to remember that he was Herr Holdern.

“Yes?”

He turned to find a greasy looking little man standing behind him.  He didn’t recall seeing him before, and after a month and a half at sea, that was remarkable in and of itself.

“Do I know you?”

“I do not think so, but I know some Holderns.  Do you come from Boxstein?”

“No,” replied Wissinger.

“Do you have relatives there perhaps?”

“Not that I know of.  You know how it is.  People move all around and lose touch.  You meet someone with the same last name and they may or may not be related.  My people come from Bad Syke, but who knows?”

“What is it you did in Bad Syke?”

“Oh, I’m not from Bad Syke.  I still have cousins living there, I think.  I grew up in Wahlstedt.”

“And what did you do there then?”

“Teamster.”

“A teamster?” said the greasy fellow.  “I took you for a scholar.”

“I doubt you get calluses like this reading books,” said Wissinger, holding up his palms.  “Why, I try to stay as far away from schools and books as possible.”

“I see.”

“But it is pleasant to meet you, Mister…”

“Spinne.  Adolf Spinne.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Herr Spinne.  Maybe we can talk again before we make port.”

“Perhaps,” said Spinne with an oily smile.

Wissinger turned and made his way through the portal and down several sets of stairs to his berth.  His was one of twenty-five bunks stacked five high in the relatively small cabin.  Most of his roommates slept at night, so he tried to spend as much time as possible outside at night, instead taking in a long morning and afternoon nap.  He climbed into his bed, second from the top and pulled the sleeping curtains closed around him.  He could hear the sounds of a woman moaning in passion close by.  She was in the same room, but in one of the other bunk stacks.  This wasn’t all that unusual.  People grabbed what comfort and satisfaction they could, and there were very few places to find any real privacy on a ship as crammed as this one.

“Sweet music isn’t it?” said a husky voice near his head.

Before he could respond, the curtain surrounding him was pulled aside to reveal Zurfina’s face, framed in a shock of blond hair.  She climbed up into the bed on top of him.  There was no room to lie side by side even had that been her intention.  He was surprised though not unhappy to find that she was completely naked, and let out a deep sigh as she rubbed herself up and down his entire length.

“Missed me?”

“Yes indeed.”

She kissed him deeply, letting her tongue explore every part of his mouth.

“Have you been true to me?” she asked as she kissed his neck and reached down to unfasten his pants.

“Yes,” he said, then sighed again as she freed him from his trousers.  “Um, have you been true to me?”

She stopped and looked guiltily up at him, then shrugged.

“When you get to Birmisia, if you want, I’ll be true to you then,” she said, “for a while.”

“Oh, Lord help me, at this moment I really don’t care.”

There was almost no room for him to maneuver, so he simply lay back and let her do all the work.  It was a work for which she once again proved her skill, though she was somewhat louder than the woman who had been in the nearby bunk.  Wissinger didn’t realize it at the time, but he was none too discrete himself.  Afterwards he fell asleep with her still wrapped around him, and when he woke she gave him a repeat performance.

“The day after tomorrow you dock in Mallontah,” she said when they were done.

“That’s good.”

“Yes, but you still have a problem.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s that Spinne fellow you just spoke to.  He’s a Zaeri catcher.”

“I don’t think he suspects me.”

“But you’re not sure, are you?”  Zurfina licked his lips.  “I have to admit, I admire how good a liar you’ve become.  I wouldn’t have expected it.”

“It’s a writer’s skill,” he replied.  “What do you think I should do?”

“Just make it to Birmisia the best you can.”  She kissed him deeply.  “I have to leave and you won’t see me again until after you leave Mallontah.”

She slid off of him and out of the bed.  Wissinger pulled back the curtain to look at her one last time before she left, but she had already gone.

The Young Sorceress – Chapter 9 Excerpt

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Hsrandtuss was startled awake when whatever he was lying on bounced.

“Girls, leave me alone.  My head hurts.”

Cautiously opening one eye, he saw that the thing he was lying on was the hard ground and it had bounced because the dragon had fallen out of the sky to land less than a score feet away from him.  He slowly rose to his feet, his tail dragging the ground as he staggered toward the little god.

“Hail mighty Yesse… nnar!” he said, stopping midway through the dragon’s name to hiccup.

The dragon waved him off, having eyes only for the young soft skin.  He spoke to her in the hoonan language.

“Sszaxxanna, blast it!  Where in name of Setemenothiss are you?”

“Here,” she called, sliding up next to him.

“What is he saying?”

The dragon had continued to talk to the sleeping priestess.

“He says ‘wake up’ and ‘time to go to hoonan city-state’.”

“You can’t leave yet,” said Hsrandtuss.  “We will have an even bigger feast for you tonight.”

The dragon’s tone changed to an urgent, beseeching sound.

“He says ‘get up, please’ and he calls her ‘favorite domestic animal’,” Sszaxxanna translated.

Hsrandtuss paused for a moment in thought.  Well, not what he expected, but it made a certain amount of sense, considering the place on the food chain of dragons and soft skins.  He stepped up beside the dragon’s massive head.

“Is there something wrong?”

The dragon’s face hovered above prone hoonan, its long forked tale running over her from head to feet.

“Yes, there is something wrong!” boomed the dragon, waking the last of the sleeping lizzies.  “I can smell something foul.”

His tongue flicked around her head again.

“There’s a sickening smell around her ear.  I think she’s been stung or bitten by something.”  His great head swung toward Hsrandtuss.  “Is there some kind of creature that attacks the ears of mammals?”

The king thought hard.  There were plenty of mammals around—small ones like opossums and weasels, but he didn’t know much about them, especially not what kind of parasites fed on them.

“It was Hkhanu!” shouted Sszaxxanna.  “He came in the night and poured poison in the youngling’s ear.  I wasn’t sure that I truly saw it, because I was half asleep, but now I remember.”

“What?” wondered the king.

“Ssu!  Come here!”  Sszaxxanna called another female over to her, a small one, only recently caught and civilized.  “You saw the witch doctor too, didn’t you?  You saw him pour poison into the poor soft skin’s ear.”

The young female nodded emphatically.

“I can’t believe it,” said Hsrandtuss.

Sszaxxanna grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a shake.

“The guilty must be punished,” she said.

“Yes.  Yes.  The guilty must be punished.”  He raised his voice and shouted.  “Warriors, to me!  Warriors, attend your king!”

Within seconds a group more than twenty large males surrounded him.

“To the temple!  Bring everyone inside down to the fire pit!  Justice must be seen to!  Do it now!”

The warriors, bolstered by even more of their ranks who had arrived as the king was talking, moved up the path to the top of the hill, and into the great and ancient stone temple.

“What can we do?” wailed the dragon.  “Is there a medicine for her?”

“We will force the perpetrator to tell us,” said Sszaxxanna.

“Yes, of course,” said the king.  “In the meantime Sszaxxanna, get the healing women to have a look at the human and see if there is anything they can do.”

With a nod, the female left, pulling young Ssu along with her.  She returned several minutes later with two old females who began to prod and probe the soft skin’s ear.  The dragon sat back, wringing his hands like an egg keeper in cold weather.  The women were still examining their patient, when the warriors returned dragging along Hkhanu’s six acolytes and four females.  Hkhanu himself was with them too, but apparently none of the warriors was brave enough to actually lay hands upon the old witch doctor.

“You are in trouble now, Hkhanu,” said Hsrandtuss.  “You must answer for your crimes.”

“How dare you send your warriors into the temple!”  The old lizzie was so angry he was literally spitting.  “How dare you treat me like a common zsrant!”

“What did you do to her?” roared the dragon, and with a single bound, he landed amid the warriors and priests and snatched up Hkhanu in his scaly hand.  “What did you poison her with?”

For a second, old Hkhanu looked frightened, then he looked confused, but then he puffed himself up.  “You are a false god,” he said.

Something shot through the witch doctor’s chest so quickly that it was as if he had been struck by lightning.  It was the barb on the dragon’s whip-like tail.  Lifting up his tail, the body still impaled upon it, the great steel beast slashed twice with the claws of his left hand, and Hkhanu fell to the ground in a dozen pieces.

“Line them up!” called Hsrandtuss, taking a spear from a nearby warrior.  “Line up these so-called wise elders.”

The prisoners from the temple were put in a line and pushed down onto their knees.

“What did Hkhanu do to the soft skin priestess?” he asked the first acolyte.

“I don’t know anything about…”  The answer was cut short as the king drove his spear down into the captive’s chest.

He received a similar answer from the second in line, and gave him just as quick a death as the first.  The third in line, clearly seeing where this was going, started talking before the king had even come close to him.

“He did it!  Hkhanu poisoned the hoonan.  He used a secret poison.  No one knows the cure.”

Hsrandtuss turned toward the dragon.  “Great Yessennar, I place my people completely at your command.  We will do anything to help your little one.  But I do not know what that could be.”

“Take her to the human city-state,” said Sszaxxanna.  “The soft skins have powerful magic.  Maybe they can help her.”

“Yes, I’ll do that,” said the dragon, taking the girl’s limp body gingerly in his hands.  “My thanks, Mighty King.”

Hsrandtuss watched as the dragon shot into the sky faster than anything he could imagine.  Then with one wave of his wings, he zoomed northward.  Hsrandtuss truly hoped the young soft skin would recover.  He didn’t know if Hkhanu had anything to do with her mysterious illness or not.  It all worked out well though.  He would have no trouble with the temple.  He would in fact, rededicate it to Yessennar and choose a new priest, one that would cause him no trouble.  He glanced sidelong at Sszaxxanna.  She was a wily one.  She smiled back at him.  Yes, he might well have found a new matriarch.

“Come, get the other females,” he said to her.  “I need oil rubbed on my back.”

“Yes, Mighty King.”

Mighty King.  Hsrandtuss definitely liked the sound of that.

The Young Sorceress– Chapter 8 Excerpt

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“I honestly don’t know what her problem was,” said Senta over her cup of tea.

“It reinforces what I’ve always said,” said Nellie Swenson.  “Magic is too dangerous.”

Graham looked from one to the other, clearly expecting Senta to get up and clock the girl reporter in the noggin, but she just smiled and nodded.

“Another bottle of Billingbow’s!” he called to the passing waitress, who happened to be his sister.

“You know where it is!” she shouted back at him.  “Go get it yourself!”

“Does anyone else want anything?” he asked the two girls seated with him.  They both shook their heads.

“Alright then, um, I’ll just be right back.”

“So how are you finding Birmisia?” asked Senta when he had left.

“Knock off the chit-chat, you lunatic,” replied the redhead.  “You’re a menace and I intend to tell all of Brechalon about it.”

“So who’s stopping you,” replied the sorceress.  “Do whatever you want.”

“Oh, I will.  And before I’m done, I’ll have freed Graham Dokkins from whatever magic you’ve used to cloud over his mind.”

Senta snorted into her cup.

“You’re a daft cow,” she said.

Graham returned with his bottle of soda, but before he could sit down, Nellie jumped to her feet.

“Come on, Graham.  I want to feed the dinosaurs.”

The boy looked questioningly at Senta.

“Go ahead,” she answered his unasked question.  “Run along and play.”

She sat alone for a few minutes finishing her tea, and had just decided to head home, when the chair opposite hers slid back and Hertzal plopped down into it.  He gave her a look, with one brow cocked.

“What?” she asked.  “Do you think I’ve ensorcelled him too?”

He shook his head.

Gaylene stopped at the table.

“Having tea then, Hertzal?”

He nodded and made a circle with his hands.

“Soup coming up,” said Gaylene, and then hurried away.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” asked Senta.

Hertzal shook his head again.

“So what are you doing?”

He shrugged.

“You need a girlfriend, that’s what,” said Senta.  “Maybe we can find you a little ginger tramp too.”

The Drache Girl – The Dechantagne House

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In addition to Iolanthe and Yuah, several others live in the Dechantagne household (not including the servants).

Mrs. Colbshallow continues to live with the Dechantagnes.  Mrs. C is perhaps the most often encountered household memeber.  She has her bit in all six of the books.  By this point, she’s pretty much running the house and her son lives right across the street.

Iolana, Iolanthe’s daughter is a toddler in this book and while she appears, she doesn’t have too big a part to play.  The same is true of Yuah’s son Augie, who is a tiny baby.  Both have a much bigger parts in books 4 & 5.

At that moment a little girl, almost three, in a bright floral dress ran into the room.  Her blond hair seemed thin around her chubby, round face, but was supplemented with a large red bow on the top of her head.  Bouncing along on her chubby little legs, she was not quite in control of her body, and bumped right into the stuffed arm of Iolanthe’s chair.  She was up again quickly, though she left the item she had been carrying, a doll with a dress exactly like hers, lying on the hardwood floor.

“Auntie Yuah,” said the toddler, running to the woman with the baby.  “I want to give Augie a kiss.”

“Alright, but carefully.  He’s asleep and we don’t want to wake him.”

With the exaggerated movements that are so endearing in the very tiniest human beings, the little girl reached up on her tip-toes and puckered up her lips, stretching them out as far as they could go, and kissed the baby, held out by its mother, with a smacking sound.  She then rolled back on her heels, almost losing her balance and falling back onto the coffee table.

“Very sweet,” said Yuah.  “Now go see Mummy.”

“Don’t you dare jump on me,” said Iolanthe, as the child trundled around the table toward her.  “Your dress is filthy.  What have you been doing?”

“Making mud pies.”

“Making mud pies,” muttered the governor.  “Sirrek!”

The mottled yellow and brown lizardman returned.

“Who is supposed to be watching Iolana?”

“Kheesie,” hissed Sirrek.

“Remind her that the child is supposed to stay clean.  If she can’t do her job, I’m sure that there are others who can.  And have her draw Iolana a bath.”  Iolanthe turned to Yuah.  “If there is one thing you can count on the lizards to get right, it’s bathing.”

Yuah gave a half nod-half shrug of acknowledgement; though the vast majority of her attention was still on the sweet, perfect, angelic, little face of Augustus Marek Virgil Dechantagne.  At two months old, he was still so tiny and so helpless that without trying, he activated that part of her that seemed to want to do everything for him and to give him everything.  And he looked so much like his father.  She held and cuddled him for half an hour, scarcely noticing that everyone else eventually left the room.  Finally she was rewarded with his dark blue eyes opening.  As he looked back at her, she felt the pull of her milk, and carried the baby upstairs and into the nursery to feed him.

The Young Sorceress – Chapter 7 Excerpt

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“I don’t like sitting here with them staring at me like that,” said Senta, as she brushed her hand through her hair, blond once again.

She was perched on a large rock twenty feet from Bessemer, who was stripping great pieces of flesh from the body of an adolescent paralititan.  Fifty feet from them, two large tyrannosaurs watched, their ugly black heads bobbing up and down as they shifted from one foot to the other.

“Piss off, you!” Bessemer shouted at them.  “This is my lunch!”

“I don’t think that’s going to do it,” said Senta.

The steel dragon turned toward the two monsters and roared, a massive gout of flame shooting more than half the distance toward them.  The dinosaurs roared back, but then turned and stalked off across the great field toward the herd of triceratops in the distance.

“I guess you showed them,” said Senta.

“It’s not the size of the dragon in the fight.  It’s the size of the fight in the dragon.”

The young sorceress thought that his philosophy must be correct, as either one of the black and red predators was easily twice as big as the dragon.  Then again, maybe it was the fire.

“You’re not frightened of them?”

“I used to be.  I suppose if one actually got a hold of me, I’d be in for it.  That’s not going to happen though.  And when I get a little bigger, there’ll be no creature on this entire continent for me to fear.”

“There’s always the other one—Hissussisthiss.”

“Yes, there’s always him,” said Bessemer.  “I wonder about him sometimes.  He must be lonely with no other dragons around.”

“Are you?  Lonely, I mean, with no other dragons around?”

“I’ve got you, don’t I?”  He took another big bite of dinosaur meat and chewed it.  “Someday I think I’ll meet other dragons.  There are bound to be some around somewhere.  Humans can’t have wiped them all out.”

“What makes you think it was humans?”

“You know it was,” he said.  “You lot are always wiping out other creatures.  Look at the stories.  Rendrik of the North, and those other barbarians—they were out slaying dragons all the time.”

“I suppose,” said the girl.

“Maybe they are all gone.  Maybe humans did kill them all off.  Maybe it is just me and that great green brute.”

Senta just shrugged.  She didn’t have any answers for herself; certainly none for the dragon.