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ISBN 1-59201-025-3
Books Unbound E-Publishing Co.
http://www.booksunbound.com
Publication September 2004
Cover Art by D. Lee
Rise of the Red Wolves
Melody Muckenfuss
Copyright 2003
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and occurrences are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not the goal of the author or Books Unbound.
Chapter One
* * * Indiana * * *
Natalie moved in the state of "being without being" that over the years had become as natural to her as sleep. Within the space of a deep breath she left her physical body behind in her room and went traveling through corridors as ethereal as the form her essence assumed.
These were not real halls, but merely the images her brain had constructed to represent the myriad portals through which she could pass, portals that led to a thousand and more worlds that existed beyond her native Earth, worlds that rotated in other times and other realities than her own.
She moved past a tall, thin door that appeared to be formed of crumpled foil, and another of heavy wood no more than three feet high, but wide enough to drive a full-sized car through. She lightly touched on each of these possibilities as she passed, getting a glimpse of what lay beyond, but not entering.
She slid through a door composed of tightly coiled vines, the leaves so tightly grown together they were like layers of living wallpaper. Beyond, Natalie found a thickly forested land, the sky so darkly blue it was almost purple. Scattered among the trees were gaily colored structures too permanent to be tents, but seemingly too fragile to be houses, constructed of a material that might be stiffened silk or glossy paper. The denizens of that land were tall and gaunt, as pale as skim milk, and they moved silently among the trees, careful to always remain in the shadows, untouched by the brilliant sun.
Natalie moved on, back to the halls. She trailed her fingers lightly across a hammered copper door, and shuddered at the ugly images she saw beyond it. She saw a gray sky hovering low over a nearly featureless landscape, broken occasionally by sluggishly flowing, murky streams of bluish mud. She moved to the next, gliding quickly away from that portal, not caring for a closer look at who--or what--might live there.
She Drifted randomly for a time, but soon enough she decided to abandon the halls and go directly to Shivan, to search yet one more time for her elusive father.
After ten years she had no real expectation of finding him there, but she could not give up hope. The necklace she wore around her neck had been the last thing her beloved father had ever given her, and the pearl-like stone was unique to that alien land. She had once firmly believed that Lyle Dunham had given her the necklace so that she could follow after him once she'd matured enough not to be a burden on him. After so many years of fruitless searching her belief was wearing thin, but she clung to the last threads of hope like a child might clutch the frayed remnants of a favored baby blanket, reluctant to discard the tenuous security it offered.
Natalie didn't need the formality of a portal to reach Shivan. Once she had been to a world she could return with a thought, needing only a simple landmark to guide her--a tree, a crossroads, even a familiar face. She had tried to use her memory of her father to locate him directly, with no success. She suspected that her image of him, as faded as the only photograph of Lyle her mother had allowed her to keep, was not clear enough to take her to him.
So she Drifted to Shivan, back to the tiny village she had last skimmed over, and sent her ethereal form at breathtaking speed across the alien land.
Shivan was a beautiful place, so earthlike that it might be a slightly flawed clone of her own planet, a younger version untouched by the soot-smeared hand of industrialization. She sped away from the crude village, a mismatched conglomeration of stone and wood cottages connected with surprisingly intricate cobblestone pathways, and raced across plowed fields and open meadows dusted with a light layer of snow. The fields gave way to forest, oak and maple trees growing closely with a variety of trees she could not name, towering growths that were unique to this place.
She traced the meandering path of a wide road, unpaved but so hard packed that the clay soil was smooth as concrete, knowing that such a well-maintained road would likely lead to a city. She would move among the citizens of any such city, unseen and unheard in her out-of-body form, scanning for a glimpse of her father. If she ever found him, a mere thought would bring her physically to this world, and she longed for the day when Lyle Dunham would throw his arms around her and call her Nate, the nickname he had tagged on her so long ago.
In the distance she saw movement, like the undulating waves of a restless sea, churning and rolling over itself as if whipped into a frenzy by a great storm. There was no such storm though, only blue sky and a winter weak sun doing its determined best to melt away the light covering of snow on the ground. She moved towards the commotion, curious enough to be distracted from the promised city down the road.
The churning motion was not a sea, storm whipped or otherwise, but instead a vast field of men, engaged in a fearsome battle.
Nate flinched away from the sight, disturbed by the clash of steel and screaming cries of dying men. This was not a battle of her modern Earth, fought long distance with sophisticated weaponry that allowed men to kill other men without ever having to look them in the eye. This was a closely fought contest of swords and axes, sharpened blades cleaving into flesh and bone, creating sprays and showers of blood to bathe the contestants with gruesome reality.
Nate had witnessed plenty of bloodshed in movies--stabbings and decapitations and masked characters wielding chainsaws--but none of those cinematic productions, no matter how high-tech their special effects had been, had come close to the brutal reality of this battle. The best of those movies were but a pale reflection in a dusty mirror of the actual fight waged below her.
No movie could reproduce the odors of blood and sweat overlaid by the sharp scent of fear that assaulted Nate's senses. Men cried out in defiance and rage, their shouts twisted into screams of pain as metal bit flesh, twisted yet again to moans of despair when their life blood flowed into the muddy ground.
Nate had never been thirsty for violence or anxious to witness the suffering of others. She had a quick temper, manifested in a few shouted words or more likely a rapid spin on her heels as she stalked away from an argument. Yet she found herself moving closer to the battle, Drifting in until she was but a few yards from the edge of the roiling mass of fighters, drawn by a compulsion she couldn't name.
Back in her bed, her physical body shifted, her heart pounding with excitement and horror. If anyone had been there to observe they might have thought her to be trapped in a violent nightmare, her hair matted to her forehead with the sweat of terror, her lips moving in a silent plea for rescue from whatever nightmare monster pursued her.
Nate was safe from physical harm so long as she left that material part of herself back in Indiana. She knew that it would take but a thought to bring herself here completely, to expose her mortal flesh to the slashing blades of the violence before her, and that knowledge caused a fresh shiver of fear to run like cold, trickling water down her spine, but still she didn't retreat.
Nate had never before understood the strange fascination people had with risking their lives, parachuting off high towers or bungee jumping from bridges, betting their lives on the competency of the men and women who manufactured their parachutes or elastic ropes. Now she found herself drawn towards this great conflict before her, strangely exhilarated by the tingling pressure that seemed to originate in her head and her chest, pulsing through every vein and nerve ending in her body until her fingers, her toes, even the roots of her hair seemed to be twitching with energy.
The fighting was chaotic, men swirling together like leaves caught in a hundred competing funnels of wind, tossed against each other at random to strike first or die, the survivors then pulled apart and blown towards another foe, until Nate wondered how any man knew who was ally, who was enemy.
In the midst of this shuddering, shifting mass of flesh she saw two men who never seemed to part before the force of the bloody storm. They remained back to back, stepping together as smoothly as if their leather vests were magnetized, keeping them always within a few feet of each other.
Even splattered with blood the taller of the two men was unusually handsome, his blonde hair reflecting the sunlight like a mirrored beacon. Oddly, the man was grinning, as if this battle was a joyous event, no more to be feared than a ride on a well-constructed roller coaster.
His companion, dark haired and bearded, not nearly as handsome but good-looking enough in a rough-hewn way, had no such smile on his face. His brown eyes were intensely focused, his expression set in strong lines that showed no joy, no fear, only determination to be the quickest to strike, the most efficient at raising his shield to deflect a blow.
Nate watched the fighters, no less fearful than she'd been, but now concerned with their well being, as if in looking into their eyes she had come to know them, had somehow earned the right to care about their lives.
These weren't the first people she had observed while Drifting, and this wasn't the first event she had participated in vicariously, absorbing the emotions through an innate empathic ability that was but another facet of her magic. This, though, was the first time she had been drawn towards a struggle for life, had felt the fear and rage of men facing death yet fiercely resolved to stare it down, to go on living past this battle, into the dawn of a new day.
* * * Shivan * * *
Phenny's world had been reduced to the five-foot square section of the chaotic field within reach of his bloody sword.
His nostrils were clogged with the odors of blood and sweat soaked leather, and his lungs struggled to absorb enough oxygen to keep his limbs in motion.
On the battlefield, time was measured in sword strokes and frantically beating hearts. Elsewhere, people might think it time for breakfast, or time to plow, but here all that mattered was the next breath, the only sure affirmation that a man still lived.
The sounds of steel impacting on steel, mingling with the grunts of effort, screams of pain, and dying moans of the men around him were a chaotic symphony that Phenny had played counterpoint for many times already.
At his back, Nolen defended his own tight space on the battlefield, his shouts of defiance daring death to try and take him, while his slashing sword denied his enemies the opportunity to push him towards that fate.
Yet another soldier fell to Phenny's sword, but here on the front line there seemed always to be another to step over the body and resume the fight.
Phenny had no idea how many men had succumbed to his thirsty blade this day. It mattered little, so long as he and Nolen were still standing, still clinging to the world of the living, a place Phenny had grown rather fond of in his nineteen years. He wasn't yet ready to move on to whatever life awaited him after this one.
A body slammed into Phenny, breaking his rhythm for less than a heartbeat before he could reset his feet on the bloody soil and block yet another oncoming sword blade.
He spared a bare flicker of a glance to see that the body belonged to Commander Mason, who was bloodied, but not dead. An enemy soldier was rushing after the fallen commander, intent on changing his status.
Phenny shifted his footing yet again, moving to cover Mason while still parrying with his own opponent.
Not needing words to know his partner was moving, Nolen fell back from his own foe, staying close to Phenny as they formed a human shield over the commander.
A hard blow, a bit of luck, and Phenny's opponent fell. Phenny turned to meet the deathblow meant for Mason, blocking it awkwardly with his heavily scarred shield.
Already another fighter had moved in to take the place of the last man Phenny had killed, but Commander Mason had made the most of his reprieve and was back on his feet, now defending Phenny's other side.
The commander fit himself into the partner's rhythm like a piece in a living puzzle, and the three of them formed a tight triangle, fighting on, ignoring the flow of blood from minor wounds and the stinging sweat that threatened to blind their already tearing eyes. Adrenaline pushed them beyond exhaustion, beyond the fear of death that might paralyze lesser men.
Phenny heard the ominous crack when a sword blow met his shield, and he cursed even before a second strike finished the job and his worn shield snapped in half.
Another sword slashed through his leather bracer, and Phenny let the remaining shards of his wooden shield fall from his bleeding arm, rage and desperation masking the pain to a degree that no amount of healing herbs or spells would manage to do later.
The harsh notes of a horn rent the air, carrying even over the sounds of battle. For long moments the battle continued, the soldiers too closely engaged to break off fighting in spite of the repeated calls for retreat.
Slowly, the enemy disengaged, falling back towards their breastworks near the river, still defending but no longer pressing the attack.
As abruptly as he'd found himself in the midst of battle, Phenny found himself standing, still more or less whole, in the suddenly calm field, only the atonal moans of the wounded remaining of the battle-mad symphony.
Bloody, swaying with exhaustion, Commander Mason clapped Phenny on the shoulder and spared him a short-lived grin.
"Well met, Phennis of Tilsdale."
Nodding to acknowledge the Commander's thanks, Phenny glanced around to be sure Nolen had suffered no mortal wounds.
Nolen was still grinning, a disconcerting expression that would have appeared cheerful if not for the shine of battle fever in his eyes. His handsome face was covered with blood, but it was mostly the back-splash of his opponent's wounds, and little of the glistening red fluid was his own.
Satisfied that they had come through one more day of fighting intact, Phenny turned away from his grinning friend and moved to help the wounded off the field.
* * * Indiana * * *
"Natalie? Are you home? Natalie!"
Her mother's voice called her back from Shivan, and Nate reluctantly accepted her return to her own reality and answered.
"Yeah Mom, I'm here!"
"Well for Heaven's sake, why didn't you answer me?" Barbara Beauchamp came into Nate's room, looking frazzled and exhausted.
"Sorry, I guess I didn't hear you."
Barbara recognized the distant look in her daughter's eyes, as if she were gazing at something far away over Barbara's shoulder, and immediately her lips pressed together in a thin line of disapproval. "Natalie, you weren't meditating, were you?"
"No, I was just reading." Nate held up the book spread open on her lap to provide proof, not liking the necessity of lying to her mother but knowing from countless arguments that there was no way to convince her mother that Drifting was harmless.
The lie fell flat. Nate wasn't a very good liar, probably because she detested doing it. Barbara snatched the book from her hands and skimmed over the open page.
"Good book, huh? So good you were too involved to hear me shouting for you the past five minutes?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"So tell me a little about it. What's so fascinating?"
"It's a fantasy story about this boy who grows up to be a great magician..."
"No, Natalie, don't tell me what I can read for myself on the back cover! Tell me what was going on in the story that had you so deeply engrossed."
Nate groped frantically for the memory of where she'd been in the book when she had set it aside, two days ago. She had opened up to her marked place and set it on her lap as a cover story, but hadn't imagined her mother would go so far as to actually quiz her on it.
Abruptly, her flustered embarrassment at being caught at her deception turned to anger at her mother's interrogation. After all, Nate was seventeen years old, nearly an adult, and it wasn't as if she had been doing anything illegal or immoral.
"All right Mom, you caught me. I was meditating. So go ahead, yell and scream, smack me around if you want. I don't care any more!"
"Oh please, Natalie, none of your melodramatics today. I've had quite enough crap already. As if I'd ever smack you around." Barbara rolled her eyes at the suggestion, and Nate shrugged angrily.
It was true, her mother had never lifted a hand to her in anger, but there were times Nate almost would have preferred physical punishment to the endless lectures that ranged in emotions from pleading to rage and nearly every degree in between.
"You know how I feel about your meditation, Natalie," Barbara started out with a reasoning tone, but Nate was in no mood to be reasonable.
"I know, Mom, I know, you think it will cause some kind of permanent brain damage, make me crazy like my father was, make me run off without a goodbye..."
"Don't take that tone with me!" Barbara dropped the reasoning tone like a pan with an overheated handle. Her ex-husband had only had the first seven years of Natalie's life to work with, but in those formative years he had poisoned her impressionable brain with all manner of ridiculous things. To think that Lyle had actually believed that there was a unique magical ability that ran in his family's veins, magic that he insisted he had passed along to his daughter. The meditation was part of that foolishness--a dangerous part. Lyle's search for the ultimate state of transcendence, or whatever it was he sought, had led him to a drug habit that had torn their family apart. Barbara would have divorced the man even if he hadn't conveniently taken himself out of their life. Her only regret was that she hadn't done it soon enough to prevent Lyle from teaching his daughter this odd and sinister form of meditation. "You can deny the dangers all you want, but you know what happened to your father...."
"Mom, please, I don't want to talk about that."
"Then don't give me a reason to bring it up!"
"Mom, it's perfectly safe for me to meditate! Grandpa Linden taught me how to see places without actually going to them...."
"Enough of that garbage! I don't want to hear about Linden's ridiculous hocus-pocus. It isn't magic, Natalie, it's just a vivid imagination, one that is liable to get you into serious trouble some day!"
"All right, I won't meditate."
"You've told me that before!"
"I'm sorry, I was just bored. It won't happen again." Nate let a small tendril of magic slip towards her mother, giving Barbara's mood the tiniest nudge.
Barbara's anger was pushed back to a state of annoyance. She pursed her lips, briefly considering yet another admonition, then let it drop, unaware that her mood had been magically tampered with.
"Come and help me bring in groceries if you're so bored!" Barbara stalked out of the room, leaving Nate to the bitter memories their discussion had brought to mind.
Nate's father had taught her how to use her magic with the gentle, patient attention that some fathers might expend teaching their children to count or to recite the alphabet. Nonetheless her knowledge of the magic was far from complete by the time Lyle had disappeared.
Barbara and Lyle had had yet another terrible fight, this time because Lyle had lost his job as an airline pilot. Barbara screeched until finally even Lyle's usually calm façade cracked and both of them stood screaming at each other, causing Nate to run for the quieter sanctuary of her room.
The arguing stopped abruptly, and Barbara came for Nate, nearly dragging her out of the house and pushing her into the car before taking off with a protesting squeal of tires.
Nate had looked back to see her father standing in the bay window, watching them go with such an expression of despair and regret that she wanted to run back to him, to throw her arms around him and comfort him until that lost look was soothed away.
She wasn't allowed to do any such thing, of course. Barbara took her shopping, drawing out the selection of new shoes and then groceries as if she intended to make a career of it.
When finally they'd come home, Lyle was gone.
His wallet, his keys, everything he owned was still in the house, right where he'd left them.
Barbara wasted no time on the mystery of why he had taken nothing with him. She was convinced he was too far gone in his drug addiction to know what he did or didn't have with him.
Nate knew better. She knew her father had Drifted to another world, one where keys and credit cards and American currency would mean nothing.
She also knew better than to reveal her certainty to her mother. Discretion, her grandfather Linden preached over and over. Discretion escapes detection.
She shook her head, wishing she could scatter and lose her own thoughts as easily as her magic allowed her to distract others. How much simpler it would be to just erase, even temporarily, such gloomy thoughts.
She couldn't use distraction on herself, though; she would have to settle for more mundane methods. Activity was the answer; she would help her mother with the groceries, then go for a bike ride. Maybe if she rode fast enough, she would leave such glum thoughts behind.
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This is a sample chapter from
Rise of the Red Wolves
by
Melody Muckenfuss
We at
Books Unbound E-Publishing Co.
www.booksunbound.com
hope you will enjoy the entire book!
Author's Biography
I have searched my entire life for a career that would hold my interest for more than a few years. Writing has been my passion since the second grade, but it never seemed to be a practical option for earning a living.
I have been a waitress, a small business owner, and pursued a degree in elementary education while raising four children. I am now devoted full time to writing, due in large part to the support of my husband and the encouragement of my son, who is an avid fan (and critic) of my work.
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