A lot of people are complaining about Katy Perry’s appearance on Sesame Street (it was pulled from the show), but honestly of all the things children under six are used to seeing, you have to figure that breasts are up near the top of the list.
The lizzie stared at her for a long moment. Finally she said. “Follow.”
Yuah found herself suddenly struggling to keep up with the reptilian who usually, like all members of her race in the colony, moved like cold molasses. She was also conscious of the fact that she was following in Cissy’s footsteps, therefore in the inferior position. They walked briskly to the point at which the street ended and the wild forest began. Cissy continued, but Yuah stopped.
“Follow,” said Cissy, turning around.
Yuah looked around, though whether for help or to make sure that no one saw her, even she didn’t know. She then stepped off the gravel road and followed Cissy into the low bushes between the redwood trees. The brush tugged at the bottom of her dress and the melting snow soaked the hem. They walked and walked. The air seemed to become darker and thicker with each step away from the realm of humanity and into the hidden reaches of the primeval forest.
“How far are we going?” asked Yuah.
“Not far.”
It was far though. At least Yuah thought it was far. They walked more than two miles in the shade of the gigantic redwoods and large maples before they came to a clearing. About one hundred yards across, the clearing seemed to be nothing special at first, but as Yuah followed Cissy out of the trees, she noticed that the ground had changed. Looking down to where to where her dress hem dragged along, she could see between the small patches of snow and the creeping roots that she was standing on a smooth surface of stone slabs that had been fitted together. She scanned the area and could see steps here and there, breaking the clearing up into several areas of varying height. In a few places there were piles of stone that might have indicated that a wall had once stood there, but there were no buildings. A loud squawk startled Yuah and she jumped over to where the lizzie stood, but it was only a small group of eight or nine buitreraptors skirting the edge of the trees.
“Look,” said Cissy.
On the other side of the clearing from where they had entered were a series of seven large stones. Each stood about eight feet tall and they were roughly oval in shape. At either end of the row were the remains of other similar stones that had once stood in the line, but had long ago crumbled, either from exposure to the elements or from ancient vandalism. Though the remaining stones were weathered and worn, Yuah could see as she stepped up to them that they had been carefully carved and must have once been very detailed. At first she couldn’t quite tell what they had been intended to represent, but after examining them for a minute or two she could just make out the features of a dragon. Each stone was slightly different as though each was portraiture of a unique individual.
“These lizzie gods,” said Cissy.
“They’re dragons. You worship dragons?”
“Lizzies haff dragon gods.” The reptilian pointed first to the statue directly in front of her and then to the right. “This is Setemenothiss. That is Hissussisthiss. I not know the others.”
“Do you think dragons are gods?” asked Yuah.
“Dragons are gods. They not like God in Scritchers. Dragons not create whorld. Not create Cissy. Not create Yuah.”
“Well then they can’t really be gods can they?”
“You see this city?” asked Cissy.
Yuah looked around. “I see the ruins of what might have been a city, I suppose, countless generations ago—hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago.”
Cissy pointed at the dragon stone on the right. “Hissussisthiss—he old then. He is still here.”
“He can’t still be alive.”
“Your wise elder; he see Hissussisthiss.”
“Wise elder?”
“Zeah Korlann.”
“Yes, my father said that he was rescued, or was it captured, by a dragon. But he was out of his head at the time, wasn’t he? It didn’t really happen. Did it?”
“He is still here.” The words had barely left Cissy’s large alligator mouth when her clawed hand shot out and grabbed Yuah by the shoulder, dragging her to the ancient stones on the ground and pulling her behind the stone image of Setemenothiss.
“What…”
Cissy hissed her to silence, then pointed around the stone. Standing in the middle of the clearing, scarcely fifty feet away was a monstrous tyrannosaurus. Even bent over at the hip so that the massive, blood red, scarred head was balanced by the long tail, it was sixteen feet tall. Its body was so black that it looked as though the horrendous face was floating atop a shadow. Its ridiculous little forelegs were barely visible. Slowly turning around and sniffing loudly, the great beast took a step forward. Yuah was sure that her heart would leap out of her throat. She wanted to get up and run, but Cissy’s body pressed her to the ground. The tyrannosaurus took another step and another sniff, and then made a peculiar coughing grunt. Suddenly it wheeled around and stalked quickly and surprisingly quietly back into the woods.
A very nice and favorable review of Princess of Amathar was recently posted by James Reed on Digital Spotlight Fiction Review.
Mr. Allison mixes old and new technology in the work, so it isn’t just a “Lord of the Rings” rip-off like many others in this genre. The Amatharians are a race described as having blue skin and I immediately thought of James Cameron’s “Avatar,” which in itself was like Fern Gully and Pocahontas crossed with The Smurfs. There is enough originality in Wesley Allison’s work where it seems familiar to us, but new at the same time. There are sword battles with creatures as well as laser gun fights involving aircraft like Return of the Jedi, minus the Ewoks.
The writing style is simple, yet not without its moments of wit and genuine charm. Some may point to the simplicity of the writing to be a point for deduction, but I found it adds to the appeal of this story. There were points in Mr. Allison’s novel that reminded me of Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.”
Read the entire review here: http://digitalspotlightfictionreview.blogspot.com/2010/09/good-wesley-allison.html.
Thanks to some recently reported bookstore downloads (147 at Barnes and Noble) Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess has topped 7500 downloads. Interestingly enough Nook users are downloading it more than His Robot Girlfriend. I wonder if it has something to do with how they appear in the store.
The S. S. Windemere didn’t arrive until Festuary eighth. It had been waylaid in the Mulliens with a damaged boiler. Still, Saba Colbshallow had been at the docks to meet it and one passenger in particular. Mr. Brockton didn’t look like a secret agent, not that Saba knew what a secret agent looked like. He was a short, slight man in his mid-forties with a brown handlebar mustache and thinning hair beneath a brown bowler hat. He looked over Saba for a moment then shook hands.
“Governor Dechantagne Calliere asked me to meet you and see that you have a place to stay,” said Saba.
“Very good,” said Brockton in a thin nasal voice. “She indicated in her correspondence that she would send a representative that had her complete trust.”
Saba tried not to let his surprise show.
“I’ve got you an apartment on the militia base.”
“Won’t that be suspicious?”
“Probably less than rooming anywhere else, unless you want to spend the next week in a tent,” said Saba. “Those are basically the two options for new arrivals. We don’t have a hotel or rooming house yet, though there are a few people who let rooms. The apartments and rental houses have quite a long waiting list.”
“The militia base it is then,” said Brockton with a thin smile.
Saba led the way up the hill from the dock yards.
“I’m going to need a day to get my land legs back,” said Brockton. “Why don’t we plan on meeting tomorrow and I’ll go over what the Governor needs to know with you then.”
Saba nodded. “Fine. I’ll have some supper sent over if you like?”
“Good.”
The following afternoon just before tea, Saba met Brockton outside the building that had been designed to eventually be part of the base’s barracks but which, since its construction, had been divided into ten small apartments.
“The best place to eat is back at the dock yard,” he said.
Brockton raised an eyebrow.
“They have food carts.”
Making their way down the hill, they took their place in the queue for sausages. Then they sat down on a bench at the northern edge of the gravel yard and ate the thick sausages, which were served on a stick.
“Not much in the way of dining in Birmisia, eh?” said Brockton, then waved off Saba’s reply. “I expected as much really. I ate so much on the voyage that I probably gained ten pounds anyway. This is fine, and so were the fish and chips you sent up last evening.”
“Good. So what is the information you want me to relay to Governor Dechantagne Calliere?”
“She is aware, though you might not be, that I am with His Majesty’s Secret Service. We have people working around the world, but right now our focus is in Freedonia.”
“Aren’t we at peace?”
“Ostensibly. But a great many things can happen. And I don’t mean war, at least I don’t mean just war.”
“What else?” asked Saba.
“ Klaus II fancies himself a wizard and he’s immersed himself in the wahre kunst von zauberei. As a result, the wizards of the Reine Zauberei have replaced most of the non-wizards in key positions in the Freedonian government.”
“Don’t we have quite a few wizards of our own?” asked Saba. “Yourself for instance?”
Brockton smiled a thin smile.
“Well spotted young Corporal. I’m a first level journeyman from Académie Argei. But you have to understand, these Reine Zauberei are not just wizards. They have their own peculiar ideas.”
“Their magic is different?”
“No, as a matter of fact their magic is almost identical to my own. It is their belief system that is different. They believe that the Freedonians are the master race and that they are destined to rule the world.”
“Isn’t that sort of jingoism pretty common?” asked Saba. “After all, patriotism is a great thing, as long as the fellow who has it is from the same country that you are. I know quite a few Brechs who think that if you’re not Brech, you’re nothing.”
“Do they want to kill everyone else in the world?”
“Um, no.”
“There you see the difference. These Reine Zauberei believe that everyone else must serve the Freedonians or be eliminated. Completely.”
“But that’s just insane.”
“Yes it is.”
“And it’s not possible.”
“There you may be mistaken. They’ve already started their plan. The first victims are the Zaeri.”
“I know they’ve been treating the Zaeri badly– forcing them out of their homes and such. The Zaeri have been treated horribly for centuries though– in Brech and Mirsanna too, not just in Freedonia.”
“There is more to it than that. In fact the Freedonians have stopped chasing the Zaeri out of the country and are now rounding them up and putting them in forced labor camps. And there are rumors of other camps– camps where the Zaeri and others are being murdered by the hundreds.”
“That can’t be true,” said Saba.
“We don’t know for sure whether it is or not.” Brockton took the last bite of his sausage and tossed the stick at the dustbin next to the bench.
Saba looked at his half eaten meal and decided that he didn’t want anymore.
“So what do you want with the Governor?” he asked.
“There are several things actually. First she has been, for her own reasons, chartering ships to bring displaced Zaeri from Freedonia, here to Birmisia. We want her to continue, and we are willing to subsidize her if necessary.
“Secondly, we believe the Freedonians are up to something here. We would like her help in finding out what that is. We don’t have the resources to send one of our operatives here for any length of time.”
“You’ve come.”
“Yes, but only for a short while, a bit shorter than I had planned actually, thanks to the Windermere’s boiler. In two weeks I’ll take the Osprey west to Mallontah. We have more pressing problems there. We believe the Freedonians are arming the locals and encouraging them to attack our people.”
“Anything else?” asked Saba.
“Yes. She needs to keep an eye on her husband.”
“The Professor? Why would she need to do that?”
“We believe he has some Freedonian sympathies, as well as some Freedonian connections going way back. And considering the potency of some of his work…”
“You mean the Result Mechanism?”
“Precisely. Even discounting its use to create magical equations, it is a powerful device. I don’t think that anyone has divined its true potential yet, and my superiors are inclined to agree with me.”
It’s time to plug Mobile Read Forums again. With more and more of us using ebooks and ebook readers, this site becomes increasingly important. This is your go-to site for information about those ebooks and the hardware that goes with them. It’s a thriving comunity of ebibliophiles who are very helpful, very enthusiastic, and sometimes wise. Visit http://www.mobileread.com/.
“You think I’m an idiot?” demanded Senta.
“I didn’t say anything of the kind,” replied Zurfina calmly.
“I know a fylfot when I see one!”
“Don’t be so defensive, Pet. I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. I merely pointed out that I have been all over this town in the past few weeks and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of this wizard of yours.”
“Well I saw him. I’ve been keeping tabs on him since he got here and I even talked to him.”
“I don’t doubt you,” said Zurfina, in a remarkably soothing voice, “but the level of residual magic around town is no more than I would expect from you and your everyday antics.”
“Are you sure you didn’t miss some?”
“Now who’s being insulting?” The sorceress’s voice suddenly flared louder. “If I didn’t detect it, it wasn’t there.”
“Hmph!” said Senta, and crossing her arms, turned to face the door.
Zurfina sighed. “Children are so difficult. Is it any wonder that I never wanted one of my own?”
“Maybe you should just get rid of me like everybody else does,” said Senta quietly.
Zurfina crossed from the kitchen to the living area and put an arm around Senta’s shoulders.
“You’re far too interesting for me to get rid of now. Look, this wizard of yours is obviously far too insignificant for me to concern myself with. You’ll have to take care of him.”
“Me? I’m just a little kid.”
“You know something?” said Zurfina, taking her arm from around Senta and grasping her by the shoulders. “Nobody believes that– least of all me. There’s not a journeyman wizard this side of Xygia who can do what you can do with magic.”
“Really?”
“Would I lie to you?”
“Of course you would.”
“Well…” Zurfina shrugged. “Keep an eye on your wizard, and if he turns out to be a threat to us, neutralize him.”
“What if you’re wrong and he magics the crap out of me?” wondered Senta.
“Then I’ll know better with my next apprentice,” replied Zurfina. “Do you want a sandwich?”
“Yes.”
Zurfina waved her finger in the air and, as the contents of the froredor began to fly out to the table and assemble themselves into sandwiches, started up the stairs.
“Bring my meal up to the top floor. Leave it on the step outside the door. Don’t come in.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” said Senta, watching mayonnaise being spread across a freshly cut piece of bread.
One of my favorite purchases for the iPad is the wireless keyboard. It is way cool, using bluetooth to connect. To be fair though, I really don’t use it much– certainly not enough to justify the price. At least not yet.
Cissy was getting quite used to her new role. The work she did, while not physically demanding, was at least varied enough to keep her attention. She enjoyed watching the humans and learning about their strange activities. She enjoyed earning many copper bits and spending some of them to buy things. She liked the human houses, especially now with four feet of snow on the ground outside and more coming down all the time. Unused rooms in the big house could become as drafty as the huts in lizzie villages, but there were so many fireplaces constantly burning that it was easy to find a place to warm up. And her own place, in the room she now shared with four other females, in the back of the motorshed was kept toasty warm in the evening.
“Pay attention Cissy,” said Mrs. Dechantagne.
Cissy was lacing up the back of the strange undergarment that squeezed the human woman’s waist. Cissy now knew Mrs. Dechantagne’s name, and indeed the names of the other members of the household, though the intricacies of their familial connections still baffled her. Nor could she pronounce most of the names, but fortunately speech on her part was seldom needed. She liked Mrs. Dechantagne almost as much as she liked Mrs. Colbshallow. Neither woman hit the lizzies and Mrs. Dechantagne didn’t yell at them overmuch. While Mrs. Colbshallow did on occasion raise her voice, she alone among the humans had learned the lizzie language, and offered affection toward the lizzies.
Cissy found herself starting to think in Brech, rather than her native language. She had learned so many words for things that there were no words for among the lizzies. She had stopped thinking of her race as “the people” and now just thought of them as lizzies, and more often than not, when she thought of herself, the name Cissy came to mind rather than Ssissiatok.
She pulled the corset strings tightly through they eyelets and pulled down on them, locking them into position, so that she could then tie them into a knot. Once that was done, Mrs. Dechantagne turned around to examine her work in the cheval glass.
“Yes, that’s fine. Now help me into the dress.”
Cissy was fascinated by the ornate dresses that the human females wore, and this dress was no exception. It was the color of an angry sunset and was made of enough material to have clothed a dozen men and women. Covered with coral roses and pink bows, it had to be carefully held so that Mrs. Dechantagne could step into it. Then it was fastened up the back with more than forty tiny buttons which Cissy could barely manipulate even with a button hook in her clawed fingers. There was no way that the woman could have put it on by herself and there was no way that she would be able to get out of it either. Of course Cissy had her own skirt, but it was just a wide piece of material wrapped around her above the tail, a mere homage to the dresses worn by the human women of the house.
Once Mrs. Dechantagne was in her dress, Cissy had to kneel down to put the woman’s shoes on her feet, using the same button hook to slip the twenty four buttons on each shoe into their correct spot. Before she could stand up she heard a shrieking sound from the doorway to the right. She turned to see elderly Mrs. Godwin leaning against the doorframe with her hand on her breast.
“Are you alright Mrs. Godwin?” asked Mrs. Dechantagne.
“I thought for a moment you were being attacked… by an alligator.”
“Did you forget your glasses again, Mrs. G?”
“Of course I didn’t. I have them… oh…” Mrs. Godwin felt of her face, and not finding any glasses there, turned and wandered off down the hallway.
“You do rather look like an alligator,” said the young woman, looking down at Cissy.
“Alligator?”
“Yes. Well, I’ve never seen one in real life. Just in books. Um, they say you have crocodiles that are very similar. Do you know crocodiles?”
Cissy shook her head.
“Oh well. Get up off the floor. I’m done with you for now. Go down and see what Mrs. Colbshallow has for you.”
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=citofama-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003XKPPOU&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
My family all went and got new phones this week as it was time for a new contract with AT&T. As usual when we re-up, we got better rates. I really wanted an iPhone 4 to complement my iPad, but just couldn’t justify the expense. I got the free phone– A Samsung. It’s the first phone I’ve had with a full keyboard. I’ve done more texting in the last 24 hours than I have done in my entire life up till this point. I think the Amatharians would approve, as they don’t like listening to disembodied voices, but they do write letters.
City of Amathar 