An Heir to Thorns and Steel (Blood Ladders 1)

Morgan Locke, university student, has been hiding his debilitating illness with fair enough success when two unlikely emissaries arrive bearing the news that he is prince to a nation of creatures out of folklore. Ridiculous! And yet, if magic exists...could it heal him? The ensuing journey will resurrect the forgotten griefs of history, and before it's over, all the world will be remade by thorns and steel....

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https://soundcloud.com/m-c-a-hogarth/excerpt-from-an-heir-to-thorns-and-steel-chapter-1-im-bored

Genre (setting): high fantasy
Tags: elves, Regency-ish, students, disabilities, angels, demons
Rating: R for violence

Excerpt from Chapter 2

The casual observer might have guessed this chaos, but somehow it was all cataloged in Professor Eyre’s mind; he knew where everything was, and to clean the mess would have rendered him mute with helplessness.

Of course, I was no casual observer, which is how I knew the folio spread on top of the precarious desk pile was new. I navigated the short distance from door to desk and craned my head to see if I could catch some of the text.

There was no text: only pictures. Not just sketches, but full miniature paintings in something that flaked with age around its edges of gold and silver leaf. They were nothing less than illuminations, but without the stylization typical of that art; they were very concerned with proportion and naturalism, even if they failed in that aim. The people dancing in the illustrations were too lithe, their limbs a touch too long, their necks more akin to a swan’s than a person’s.

Eyre would have my eyes for it, but I turned the pages anyway, looking at each succeeding depiction of these gracile dancers lounging beneath trees improbable in girth, being dressed by servants, holding balls in enormous rooms clustered with beautiful people. I paused over those depictions, for among the crowds were people short, thick-bodied and coarse: an error in the other direction, too ungainly to be normal rather than too lissome. It was a deft and subtle stylization, then; I was impressed.

Professor John Eyre walked in on me studying a picture of two of these angels in each other’s embrace, lurid enough to serve in a man’s black folio. He leaned against the doorframe, one hand in his pocket and a quirked smile on his mouth: a middle-aged man in his prime with dark tawny skin and hair gone white at the temples and sideburns, and hazel eyes that sparkled behind his spectacles.

“Ah, so what do you think of those, my student?”

“They’re excellently done,” I said. “Something new in the library?”

“Sent from Vigil,” he said. “They just unearthed it in one of the sealed rooms in their library.”

Vigil’s Athenaeum was legend. Perched on the northern border of the country, the city faced the barren winter wilderness from which, folklore maintained, demons and dark wizards crawled to feast on the blood of the living and weave abominations from their magic. History had little to say on the subject of demons and dark wizards, yet entire sections of Vigil were built on inexplicable ruins too recent for paper to have disintegrated, and the city had basements and vaults not only locked against intrusion, but cemented shut.

“From Vigil,” I said, suppressing a flutter of excitement. “Were there more?”

“They sent only this folio, but you’ve been looking at the paintings only,” he said. “There’s a text...” He flipped forward in the text, and something about his grin warned me. “Here.”

His ink-stained fingers twirled the page around to face me.

‘On Elves and Their Ancient Magics.’ Script bold as you please. The first sentence ran: “Once elves were our allies before they betrayed our trust and we drove them from our borders. Let them find their own country, the King said.”

“Well!” I exclaimed with a laugh. “This is a new variation on an old story.” I turned a few more of the pages to face me. “Yet another variation on fairies, it seems.”

“I think you should take it with you, give it a good reading,” Eyre said.

“Sir?” I asked, surprised. “You want me to take this out of the library?”

“You’re not going to drop it in mud, are you, my student?”

“No!” I exclaimed.

“Set it on fire?”

“Of course not,” I said.

“Lose it? Sell it? Crumple it up and throw it at your classmates?”

I gave up and laughed. “No, no and no. But accidents happen.”

Eyre closed the folio, revealing a second one beneath it made of stiff oiled leather, one that sealed along its edges with lips that folded in toward the center. “This should keep it safe enough from light and rain. You’ll want to read it... it will give you very interesting grounds for research.”

I received it gingerly. The oil smelled rich and musky, slick beneath my fingertips. “I imagine so. Something completely new! Have you read anything about these creatures before?”

“Yes,” Eyre said. “In histories.”

I looked up at him, stunned.

“We have reason to believe they were real,” Eyre said. “They are just no longer discussed.”

Had there been a place to sit, I would have sunk onto it. “Then the folklore about faerie kings and demons...?”

“Did you think we dreamed it completely?” Eyre said. He removed his spectacles and wiped them absently with a sleeve.

“Well, yes,” I said. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Most everyone, I suppose,” Eyre said. “But no, there is strong evidence that men are not the only race to have walked the earth.”

“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked, irritation clipping the words. “You’ve known for months this was my area of interest. Is there some sort of academic conspiracy to hide the evidence of other races from humble students of history?”

“Of a sort,” Eyre said, sitting.

I gaped at him.

“It’s not intentional,” Eyre said. “Not on our part, anyway. What manuscripts exist describing them are so few I can only imagine that they were destroyed, for what reason we can only speculate. There is the occasional mention of a betrayal but never of its nature, despite that it must have been vile indeed to inspire such vituperation. What you hold in your arms there is unusual in the extreme. It is otherwise so difficult to engage in any research at all in this arena that few people try. Those of us who chose to grew... rather protective of their memories. Ridiculous, really, given how few people care. Something with so little relevance to our contemporary lives, and the elves well and truly gone if they existed as we suspect. What is there to care about, then?”

“This is... “ I shook my head. “Staggering.”

“You’ll take good care of the book, there?” Eyre said, turning his attention to some of the papers on his desk.

“Of course,” I said, holding it against my chest.

“Then I shall see you when you’re done with it. I expect we’ll have much to discuss.”