Synopsis
The human and non-human races do not mix; to be a half-breed is to be a pariah. This truth rules the life of a young half-elf boy named Freeborn. His sole friend is Tishamon, an elven woodsman, who frequently visits the boy. Tishamon adopts Freeborn, taking the boy along on his life of wandering, working and learning.
When Tishamon becomes lamed, he settles in the Fire Hills and sends Freeborn to the local academy. The Fire Elves’ obsession with family lineage, and Freeborn’s contempt for the same, ends in violence, starting Freeborn on the trail to ever greater adventure.
Excerpt
Prologue – The Blizzard Birth
Tishamon the Long Walker added another log to the fire before he sat down to resume cleaning and polishing his chain mail jerkin. When worn over leather or padding it provided excellent protection against most weapons or the claws of all but the largest goblinoids and animals. However, the interlinked metal rings had a tendency to attract and hold all varieties of dirt, mud and plant matter, making cleaning and polishing a frequent chore, especially in the muddy seasons of Spring and Fall.
He was just picking up a hard-bristled brush to resume scrubbing when he heard a muffled double thump from the porch and door. It was unlikely that any potential enemies would be out in weather like this, but he preferred erring on the side of caution. He pulled his sword from the scabbard hanging on the wall beside him, then he strode across the single room of the cabin.
Sword held ready, he unbarred the door. The force of the wind slammed the door open in a swirl of snow that settled over the table and chairs opposite the door and drifted over the pallet on the floor next to the fireplace. Tishamon didn’t notice or care about all that, his attention was held by the small figure sprawled in the snow on the porch, a growing scarlet halo surrounding its head. He quickly scooped up the figure and darted back inside the cabin. He lay it down on the pallet and quickly shut the door, pausing only long enough to drop the bar into place.
Returning to the figure, Tishamon drug the pallet next to the fireplace and threw on some more logs. He first tried to remove the ice-caked outer garments to prevent any further body heat loss. He was instantly struck by the extraordinary thickness of ice clinging to the frozen bedroll fabric and cloak shrouding the diminutive form. He quickly set to work with a heavy skinning knife, shattering a thin line through the ice shell and frozen fabric.
His breath caught in disbelief and shock when he finally succeeded in freeing her face from her frozen hair. He saw that she was young, a tiny fraction of his five hundred years and, a Copper Elf. A knot twisted his stomach when he saw the figure’s tiny, feminine and heavily white-splotched face and her blackened, hard-frozen hands.
“Why in Blood’s name did you leave home, girl?” Tishamon asked the silent figure in disbelief. He finally cut away the bedroll and cloak fully to reveal her form. Even muffled by three layers of tunic and skirts, her heavily swollen abdomen was immediately obvious. “What in all the realms could have driven you to travel in this weather?” he asked in absolute horror.
He cut away at the ice encasing her feet and legs and groaned in sympathy when he saw the white splotches of frostbite from her knees down. When he tore the ice-saturated boots and stockings from her legs and feet, strips of frozen, blackened skin and underlying flesh came as well. Tishamon cringed, though he knew the limbs were dead, or nearly so and she couldn’t feel a thing. He cleaned her arms and legs as well as he could, shaking his head in sympathy when he uncovered the fresh gash on her forehead.
It astounded him that anyone could have been moving at all in her condition. Her lower legs were literally frozen, her hands and outer arms as well. That level of injury should have incapacitated her, if not killed her outright. Now, even if she lived, she would be a helpless cripple for the rest of her life, with stumps where her arms and legs used to be.
After Tishamon removed her ice-laden clothes and saw the convoluted brand, just below the ‘V’ at the base of her throat, he could better understand her actions. This elf girl was a slave, a slave trying to escape bondage and give her unborn child the freedom she had not had.
For her, to live would mean hundreds of years dependent upon others for everything from the instant she awakened, to the instant she slept.. A life as a powerless prisoner in a broken body. In the now-lost time before the Mage Wars, cures could have been bought for her condition; such as mechanical limbs, magical servants, or even re-growing the lost limb. Sadly that was possible no more; because all of that had been irretrievably lost. The knowledge was gone in the flames, dust and blood of the Mage Wars; unless some lucky soul came across a hidden, protected vault of tomes or wondrous objects that today’s scholars could decipher.
None of that would help this….child-woman right now. Tishamon didn’t think anything would. He placed a hand upon her bulging belly, and felt the child within move. It was strange, the girl’s arms, legs and face were all frostbitten, the skin of her breasts and swollen belly should have been as well, but weren’t. He draped an alpine bear hide over her and tossed the still-frozen clothes out toward the woodshed.
Tishamon placed a hand on the girl’s swollen belly and felt the babe inside move. The babe was still alive and seemed to be healthy, at least to his limited ability to judge.
Suddenly, her abdomen tightened in contraction, bringing a feeble moan from the unconscious girl. Tishamon had participated, at least peripherally, with many births and had played the role of midwife on occasion. After a brief deliberation, He decided to let the girl deliver naturally if she could. Perhaps she would live long enough to see and nurse the infant.
Tishamon kept vigil the remainder of the evening and throughout the night, leaving only to bring in more firewood from the shed next to the cabin. During the first two Turns of the Glass he busied himself by preparing part of an abandoned cloth bedroll to catch the blood and afterbirth in, sacrificing a relatively new, soft tunic to make diapers and sewing together a wolf hide (fur side in) for an infant carrier. After that he was forced to admit that watching and waiting were all he could do. Helping a lone woman give birth was not so bad if she was alert. She needed someone to calm and reassure her and sometimes would be able to converse until the actual pushing came. Incoherent moaning was not much to talk to. He did speak reassurances to the girl though, on the off chance she might hear him.
Beyond that, he could do nothing to ease or speed the birth, short of cutting her open and taking the baby from her body. If she died, he would have to do just that. With that thought, the woodsman drew a short-bladed skinning knife and set to work whetting the edges. When the blade met his approval, he wiped the blade clean and passed the blade through the flames to sterilize it before setting it aside where it would stay clean.
The girl’s contractions began coming closer and closer together until it seemed each came on the heels of the one before it. Still, the girl showed no sign of regaining consciousness. Tishamon sighed heavily. He had hoped she might come to for the delivery so she’d know that her struggle had not been in vain, that she’d saved her child.
In his life as a wandering hunter/guide/explorer/refugee from a commonplace existence, Tishamon had delivered children of all races. Through almost all of those deliveries, he’d silently wished the mother would shut up and give birth without thrashing about and, in the case of one fiery-haired dwarf, blacking his eye while cursing him and his ancestry in a most creative and extensive manner. Even to this day, more than a hundred years later, he had yet to hear anyone curse him better.
Today, he reversed his opinion on loud, thrashing births. Even the most verbally and physically abusive dwarf was preferable to this inert, unresponsive mother-to-be he helped now. When he finally held a small copper-skinned, squalling boy, he truly missed the joyful greeting all new mothers gave their new child. As he cleaned the infant, Tishamon noticed that the eyes had a definite greenish cast, rather than the blue-purple of new infant Copper Elves. He slowly checked more of the child’s features. The ears were too round, the nose seemed a little broad for the child to be of pure blood, but with the squashed features of a newborn, it was hard to tell. The skin was also perhaps a shade or two too pale as well.
That explained a lot. Even with as clannish as Copper Elves were, they’d not turn away someone in distress, such as this child. But, if she knew she was carrying a half-breed she might have feared they’d turn her away, or take her in and arrange either a ‘still birth’ or ‘cradle death’ for the infant. Copper Elves treasure all children, often taking in and raising the offspring of other races, making such fears unlikely, but possible.
When Tishamon finished wrapping the infant boy in a piece of blanket he turned toward the girl, he again saw the brand on her chest. As a runaway slave, she would have wanted to avoid any and all people until she was safely out of the human provinces. He’d heard rumors that the rulers of some human provinces in the Kesh Plains east of the Fire Hills had begun pogroms of exile or enslavement. Baron Uther Ulric IV was supposedly the main driving force behind the trend.
This girl was evidence enough that at least some of the rumors about enslavement were true. The stories about gang and mass rapes of non-human girls were probably true as well, he thought grimly. The faint glimmer of hope lay in the fact that Ulric probably had at most a hundred regular soldiers and could maybe raise twice that number of short-term levies. Barony Ulric was about sixty leagues from north to south and perhaps one hundred leagues east to west. Even if Ulric’s dozen or so vassals had two-dozen men each, there was still an awful lot of internal and border area to cover.
That meant there was probably a good chance for escapees, such as this girl, to make it out. The lava floes between Barony Ulric and the Fire Hills, laden with innumerable twisting passages, caves and tunnels served as veritable hideaways for individuals or small groups. Tishamon figured that was probably how this poor girl had escaped detection. They were also the best source of shelter from the fury of Khari’s early return. For some reason this runaway had decided to brave the storm rather than wait it out. Perhaps she had run out of food, Tishamon certainly hadn’t found any on her.
Tishamon gently rolled the girl onto her side and propped her up with logs covered with some of the many animal skins stored in the cabin. He put the wailing infant to the girl’s breast to feed. It was best, he’d decided, to give the newborn every benefit his mother could offer, particularly because she was dying. After the infant had drunk his fill, he settled down to happily sleep, cuddled in the unresponsive warmth of his mother’s embrace.
Tishamon resumed cleaning his armor. As the coarse brush flaked away at the dirt and rust, his mind worried at his new problem. How could he deal with his new acquaintances? If the girl defied all probability and lived, she would be a complete invalid. He probably should be carving the frozen limbs off her body right now, before gangrene set in. After a moment’s consideration, he shook his head. A quadruple amputation on the heels of a childbirth would be enough to kill the healthiest of women, much less a malnourished adolescent who’d just been through a frozen hell-on-earth. No, he’d worry about that tomorrow, assuming she still lived.
When the infant stirred and cried at dusk, Tishamon still had no answer. He set aside his armor to roll the still-unconscious girl to her other side and allow the infant to feed. He could tie the girl to his back and rig the wolf fur carrier to hold the child to his chest, but he still had no place nearby to take them. Except…well, there was the smuggler’s village that had sprung up between the new trade route and Barony Ulric. Under good conditions it was a long day’s walk. Now, in this snow, it was a day and a half at the least, maybe two. Three, if he carried the girl.
It was unusually early for Khari to begin her yearly assaults, so the cold and snow might pass. If the past few day’s snow melted, the traveling would be easier. He could avoid the worst of the mud by sticking to the ridge-lines and rocky ground.
How long could a newborn survive without its mother? He’d heard of fathers raising children from infancy when the mother died in childbed, but he was not anxious to try it himself. Tishamon was too fond of his free and wandering life. Besides, it was likely impossible to find a wet nurse willing to accompany him in his journeys from the Sea of Ice in the north to the human lands far to the south and from the Sea of Mists at the western shores and into the Kesh Plains far east of the Fire Hills. In good weather he could cover six hundred miles or more in a ten-day. No infant or small child could withstand the rigors of that kind of travel.
His life depended upon being able to pass through territory infested with active dangers unseen and unheard. A fussy, squalling child would get them both killed by any wild animals, dragons, bandits or goblinoids within earshot. Tishamon glanced at the brand just below the girl’s throat and mentally added the possibility of slavers, to the list.
The additional, indiscriminate dangers he accepted but would be unwilling to subject a near-helpless child to also included heat, cold, hunger, storms and the volcanoes that had given the Fire Hills their name. Once the boy was older, able to keep up and understand the reality of life on the trail, maybe he would take him along, but until then, no.
Over the night, he shifted the girl three times to allow the infant to feed. Now he understood why new parents always looked so frazzled. He wondered how any babe lived through their first few days of life. The next morning, however, when the boy opened his greenish-purple eyes to gaze in wonderment at whatever a newborn can see, Tishamon knew. There was something about the total innocence and trust in that gaze that awakened his protective instincts. He gently rolled the girl, giving baby a fresh breast to nurse. He suddenly wrinkled his nose at the smell coming from the baby. He gingerly unwrapped the wriggling bundle and cleaned it. He tossed the fouled cloth out the door and applied another fragment of the tunic. After re-bundling the baby, he propped it back in place it next to the girl’s breast.
Looking out through the shuttered window, Tishamon could see the wind had abated and the clouds ran across the sky in tattered streamers toward the southeast. The storm had broken then. Now he could hurry up and…wait. Wait for the weather to warm, if it would, and on the girl. Would she live or die; or linger on in unconsciousness until she wasted away?
As if in response to his thoughts, he heard a faint moan, almost more of a whimper from the bundle of blankets and hides before the fireplace. Tishamon hurried to her side. Her eyes fluttered, then slowly opened, revealing violet eyes with the vertical, catlike pupil of the Elves. “Where am I? Have I found the smuggler’s colony?” the words came almost as a whisper. She looked at the tiny bundle snuggled against her. “This, this is my baby?”
“Yes, that is your son.” Tishamon replied, kneeling next to her. “You’ve escaped the human provinces into the Fire Hills. You are free, now.”
She looked at her son contentedly sucking away, and smiled sadly. “My child, conceived by rape and carried in slavery. His father tortured and burned alive by his mother, and born into freedom by his mother’s death. My freeborn son, . . . Freeborn . . . ” Her voice trailed off into silence as her eyes lost their focus and stared blankly into space.
“Girl? ..GIRL!” Tishamon shook her shoulder, gently at first, then roughly, trying to bring her back from Death’s door.
“I haven’t much time.” She spoke, each word an effort as she struggled to raise her head. “Khari will come to collect her price for sparing my baby.” Her eyes suddenly sharpened, becoming terribly aware as they locked onto his. “Swear to me, on your life, swear to me that you will care for my son. Raise him to value life, freedom and justice. Raise him to stand against evil in all of its forms.” She paused, shallowly gasping for breath, then smiling gratefully at Tishamon, she added, “Raise him to be gentle and kind like you, who took in a helpless stranger, cared for her, delivered her child, then cared for him, too.”
Swallowing past the lump in his throat, and feeling dangerously close to crying, Tishamon nodded. “I swear that I shall do as you ask, my lady.”
She relaxed and let her head sink back onto the pillow of bundled hides. “Then I am ready to go. I die in peace.”
Suddenly, the temperature of the room dropped drastically. Despite the roaring fire, his breath and that of the girl and baby fogged the air. A faint, high-pitched whistle, like wind in the eaves, caught Tishamon’s ear. Half-fearfully, he raised his eyes from the girl and saw a column of fog and snow in the form of a robed and hooded figure with faintly glowing ice-blue eyes standing in the corner of the cabin, near the hearth.
Impulsively, he jumped to his feet and drew his sword. “You shall not have her, ice creature!” Tishamon shouted defiantly at the snow wraith.
“Do not defy me, woodsman,” spoke a breathy voice, like the wind tearing through the naked branches of a forest in winter. “She is here through Khari’s forbearance. She would have died on the borderlands, and her child with her, had the Ice Queen not given her the ability to go on.”
“Khari is not without mercy. She was impressed when the girl asked not for her own life, but offered her spirit in exchange for the assured survival of her child. The Mistress of Winter spared her belly and breasts the kiss of cold that the child and its food would be protected. At the end, my mistress sent one of her Winter Wolves to guide the girl to you.”
The wraith then raised a hand shrouded in swirling snow and fog. “Do not delay me further, woodsman, Khari is not patient. All you would accomplish is your own frozen death and cause the infant to slowly die from exposure.”
Reluctantly, Tishamon let the tip of his sword dip to the floor and stepped away from the dying girl. Though the creature came no closer than six feet, Tishamon could feel a chill reach into his bones as it moved past, trailing a tiny shower of frost in its wake. The creature stopped beside the girl and held out its hand.
Tishamon watched a misty, girl-like form rise and take the wraith’s hand. It turned and blew a kiss toward the babe and spoke in a hollow parody of her living voice. “Do not forget your vow, woodsman. I will be watching him, and you.” Both figures then drifted upward through the roof of the cabin.
A heavy sadness weighed at Tishamon’s heart as he sheathed his sword and stepped over to the blanked and hide-covered bundle next to the fireplace. The girl was dead. Frozen. Dripping icicles hung from her hair and nose. Her skin was frost-white and her lips blue. Suddenly wild with fear for the child, he uncovered the motionless bundle next to the dead girl in time to see it yawn hugely, blink and close its eyes to sleep.
A warm wind began to blow outside, eating the snow away. In just a few hours, no trace of it was left, save the moistness of the ground. Tishamon hurriedly set to work, cutting one of the smaller skins into narrow strips and fashioned the remainder of the old bedroll into a shroud. “Freeborn,” he reminded himself. “His mother named him Freeborn.” When he was done with that, the girl’s body had thawed enough to wrap in some of the furs and lay in the shroud, which he then sewed shut with the fur strips.
A short distance from the cabin was a crumbling cliff whose base had been undercut by the nearby river in ages past. The undercut was capped by a thin shelf of sandstone that supported a great pile of loose stone that had fallen from the slowly crumbling cliff above. After he placed the surprisingly light, pitiful bundle in the undercut, he stepped well back and began one of the few more powerful incantations he knew. He aimed the spell at the lip of rock above the girl’s corpse. He worked the tendrils of arcane energy into a hammer of mystical power. When he finished, the spell shattered a large section of the stone lip into rubble. The scree tumbled down, giving the nameless elf girl a burial mound greater than those given to nobility at the height of the ancient empire.
The girl’s initial question about the smugglers’ camp had not gone unnoticed. A piece of Tishamon’s mind had captured the comment and begun working on it. Now, with the girl’s body entombed, and far better protected in death than she’d been in life, the fruits of his mental labors manifested.
Since the dwarves and elves had blocked off the main trade route into Ulric’s province, several bands of enterprising individuals and their families had moved into the borderlands. They’d been buying or stealing items from villages and trade caravans, then taking them into Ulric’s lands to sell or trade. One of the bands of smugglers had set up a small village nearby. With only the babe to carry, he could make it shortly after dark.
He would talk to Oscar. The last time Tishamon had seen him, a few ten-days ago, his wife had been about to have a child. Perhaps, with a little persuasion and a little gold, they’d not mind another mouth to feed. At least until he came to claim and raise it, as he’d promised the boy’s mother. With Freeborn strapped to his chest, and a desperate hope to avoid goblinoids, Tishamon set out through the woods.
About the Author
Steven Calkum was born in 1967 and grew up on a small ranch in East Central Colorado. He earned BS and MS degrees, and worked, in natural resources for 13 years before becoming disabled in 2011.
A voracious reader, he created his own style by rewriting drafts until he would want to read his own work.
He remarried in 2016 and plans to be a househusband and work toward a career as a writer/storyteller in addition to raising more children.
He currently lives in Wyoming with the youngest of his children from his first marriage.
Rishikesh Upadhyay, PhD, also known R K Upadhyay is an Assistant Professor, researcher, and author. He was born and grew up in a small Nepalis’ hamlet, Bhanjang Basti via Mahadev Tilla, just a few kilometers of Haflong, the district headquarters of North Cachar Hills, India, He writes about Plants and its environment. Much of his work is confined to teaching and researching physio-biochemical and environmental stress responses in plants. He currently works as an Assistant Professor of Plant Environmental Physiology and Chemistry at his local Government College affiliated to Assam University, Silchar, India.
HEATHER B. MOORE is a USA Today bestseller and award-winning author of more than seventy publications. She has lived on both the East and West Coasts of the United States, including Hawaii, and attended school abroad at the Cairo American College in Egypt and the Anglican School of Jerusalem in Israel. She loves to learn about history and is passionate about historical research.
Heather moved to the Bay Area and studied creative writing at Stanford University. Previously, several of her comedy acts and plays were performed in NYC. Her novels include the humorous Silicon Valley-based Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, Manhattan-based Persephone Cole Vintage Mysteries, Love Can Be Murder Novellas, Snow Lake Romantic Suspense Series and standalone mystery noir, Murder under the Big Top, based upon her mother’s stint as a performer with Ringling Brothers’ Circus. There is also her anthology, Corliss and Other Award-Winning Stories. Her favorite protagonist is in Corliss, one of the featured short stories, but don’t tell anyone!
Teddy Jones’s earlier novel, Jackson’s Pond, Texas, began the saga of the Jackson family. Now, Slanted Light continues their tale.
Teddy Jones is the author of three other published novels, Halfwide, Jackson’s Pond, Texas, and Well Tended, as well as a collection of short stories, Nowhere Near. Her short fiction received the Gold Medal First Prize in the Faulkner-Wisdom competition in 2015. Jackson’s Pond, Texas was a finalist for the 2014 Willa Award in contemporary fiction from Women Writing the West. Her as-yet-unpublished novel, Making It Home, was a finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom competition in 2017 and “A Good Family” was named a finalist in that contest in 2018.
Debbie De Louise is an award-winning author and a reference librarian at a public library on Long Island. She is a member of Sisters-in-Crime, International Thriller Writers, Long Island Authors Group, and the Cat Writers’ Association. She’s the author of eight novels including the four books of her Cobble Cove cozy mystery series and two short eBooks based on the books. She lives on Long Island with her husband, daughter, and three cats.
Heather Lawrence’s long-awaited vacation to Salzburg wasn’t supposed to go like this. Mere hours into the transatlantic flight, the Houston FBI agent is awakened when passengers begin exhibiting horrific symptoms of an unknown infection. As the virus quickly spreads and dozens of passengers fall ill, Heather fears she’s witnessing an epidemic similar to ones her estranged husband studies for a living—but this airborne contagion may have been deliberately released.
DiAnn Mills is a bestselling author who believes her readers should expect an adventure. She is a founding board member of the American Christian Fiction Writers; director, alongside Edie Melson, of the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference and Mountainside Retreats; and a member of Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers.
