Reprinted with permission:

“Dear Paul,

On March 1st 2012 my second child was born. During my pregnancy we did not know the gender so my husband and I had a list of possible names to choose from once the baby was born. He suggested if it was a boy to name him Erevis Cale. My oldest son’s name is Lucian and I wanted to stick with the unique for our children’s names. As soon as he suggested it I started thinking of nicknames. “We could call him Errie!”

As soon as they showed my little boy to me I knew he was Erevis. Since his birth my husband has had me read the Uskevren books along with both trilogies about Erevis Cale. I am looking forward to reading The Godborn as well. I’m certainly glad that after naming him and then reading the books I fell in love with Erevis Cale. I find him to be a very intriguing character. The more I read about him the more I started to wonder. I went on several baby name websites to see if I could find anything about the name Erevis. Of course there was nothing. I did a generic search for the meaning of Erevis and again nothing. I was hoping you would tell me what the inspiration of the name Erevis Cale is. How did you create him? I would love to know and I’m sure some day my little Erevis Cale would like to know as well.”

I explained that “Erevis” is a riff on the Greek word, “Erebus,” which is the name for a primordial deity of darkness and shadow. “Cale” has no particular meaning, but I chose it because I liked the sound of it: the hard C, the long A, and the one syllable sounded sharp as a blade to me, and very masculine (which fits the character).

I know there are Draseks out there, too, and Rivens, and at least one Kesson. Let me repeat: Very humbling, and incredibly awesome.

It contains no spoilers so you should read it.  And if you haven’t yet ordered Discourse, or read the first tale of Egil and Nix, The Hammer and the Blade, then you should hurry and do so, lest a terrible doom befall you.  DOOOOOOOOOM!

*clears throat*

DOOOOOOOOM!

That is all.

I plan to post a total of six excerpts (saving the juiciest for last, natch ), one each month starting in April and going through September.  None will contain spoilers and each will be between 900 and 1,800 words. As I mentioned, I’m going to try and feature a different point-of-view character in each excerpt, so you get a sense of the players, the tone of the book, etc.

So, without further ado, I give you the the second excerpt (the first is here). This one features the Most High Telemont Tanthul, ruler of Thultanthar, and Rivalen Tanthul, his semi-divine son. I hope you enjoy.

Oh, and don’t forget to get in on the drawing for one of five signed copies of The Godborn that I’m giving away.  Details here.

_______________________________________

Telemont leaned on his magical staff and looked out the glassteel window of his tower library. The shadow-fogged air allowed only filtered starlight through its canopy, but Telemont could see well enough. The city of Shade extended before him, the dense jumble of its towers and domes and tiled roofs blanketed in night. It was his city, and he’d fought and schemed for centuries to preserve it and its people, along the way compromising . . . many things.

“Something’s changed, Hadrhune,” he said. “The world shifts under my feet.”

Behind him, his most trusted counselor cleared his throat. “Most High?”

Telemont gestured with one hand, the shadows from his skin forming a wake behind the movement. “There’s power in the air, odd stirrings in the currents of the world. It’s troubled me for months. The gods are maneuvering, to what end I don’t know.”

“Most High, that’s why—”

Telemont nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes, that’s why I collect the Chosen. I search for them and when I find them I put them in cages, question them while I try to read the story of the changing world. And yet the question remains, and I still have no answers.”

“Most High, Prince Brennus, with his unmatched skill in divination, could—”

Telemont’s irritated gesture put a knife through the rest of Hadrhune’s sentence, and it died in silence.

“Prince Brennus,” Telemont said. “Is . . . unfocused of late.”

He watched a patrol of veserab-mounted Shadovar knights cut through the shrouded air above the city, the undulating flight of the serpentine veserabs swirling the shadowed air with each beat of their membranous wings.

“Perhaps you should put this mystery from your mind, Most High? All of the Chosen we’ve captured can be killed within an hour. You need only give the word and I can inform the camp commanders—”

“To kill them now would be premature. Many of them don’t even know what they are. Those who do don’t understand what role they’re to play. No, we keep them alive for the moment and learn what we can. Matters must clarify eventually.”

“Most High, if I may be forward . . . ”

Hadrhune paused, awaiting Telemont’s permission for candor.

“Continue,” Telemont said.

“Is it possible that the focus on the Chosen distracts from more worldly matters? The battle for the Dales goes well, but Cormyr and Myth Drannor must still be dealt with.”

“Oh, war with Cormyr and the elves is coming,” Telemont said. “Yder clamors for it. Our forces are prepared for them, but the Dales need to be pacified completely first. But this matter of the gods and the Chosen, this is something else, something . . . bigger. I need to understand it before events outrun me.”

“Shall I state the obvious, Most High?”

Telemont said nothing, but he knew what was coming.

“There is one Chosen you have not imprisoned or questioned.”

“Rivalen,” Telemont said, and a cloud of shadows swirled around him.

“Yes,” Hadrhune said, his velvety voice treading carefully. “You sent for him, but he did not respond. Yet.”

“He will come,” Telemont said, thinking of his son, the son he no longer trusted, the son he no longer understood.

“As you say, Most High. When he comes, perhaps with his newfound power . . . ”

“His stolen divinity, you mean,” Telemont interrupted.

Again, shadows churned.

“As you say, Most High,” Hadrhune repeated, the doubt palpable in his voice. “In any event, if the prince is a godling, perhaps he has insight into what’s happening.”

“I think not, Hadrhune. The prince no longer thinks like a man.”

Nor did he think like a Lord of Shade. He was lost in the nihilism of his faith. Telemont had scried him many times. Rivalen would stare into Shar’s eye,  not moving for days at a time.

“Most High,” Hadrhune said, “I concede that Prince Rivalen is unstable but . . . ”

Telemont felt Rivalen’s presence manifest in the room as a sudden weight on his consciousness, a density in the air, as if the room’s dimensions changed shape to accommodate him. Hadrhune must have sensed it, too, for he gasped.

Rivalen said, “You speak of me as if I cannot hear every word you say, child.”

“Child!” Hadrhune said, and sputtered in rage.

“You requested my presence,” Rivalen said, ignoring Hadrhune, his statement directed at Telemont.

“No,” Telemont said, still not turning, still staring out over Thultanthar. “I sent for you.”

Rivalen became still more present in the room, weightier. The darkness deepened, thickened somehow. Telemont resisted the impulse to mentally run through the wards and spells that guarded his person.

“You don’t send for me anymore, father,” Rivalen said. “You request my presence. And I come if I will it.”

Hadrhune recovered himself enough to say, “You will refer to him as the Most High, Prince Rivalen.”

“And you will say nothing more or I will kill you where you stand.”

Hadrhune gasped again to be so addressed, but he heeded Rivalen’s admonition and said nothing more.

Telemont made his face a mask and turned to face his son.

By now, Rivalen loomed large in the room. Hadrhune, standing near him, indeed looked like a child. Rivalen’s golden eyes glowed out of his sharp-featured face. He’d inherited the features from Telemont, but father and son shared very little else anymore.

“Divinity has made you ill-mannered,” Telemont said.

“Prince Rivalen was never known for his grace,” Hadrhune said.

Rivalen turned on Hadrhune, arm upraised as if to smack him. A sizzling mass of black energy gathered on his palm.

Hadrhune’s eyes flared. He blanched, retreated a step, and held his staff defensively before him. Veins of blue light lit the crystal atop the staff.

“Rivalen!” Telemont shouted, and slammed the butt of his own staff on the tiled floor, causing a roll of thunder. “Violence is prohibited in these chambers!”

Rivalen froze, his narrow eyes fixed on Hadrhune, the annihilating ball of power crackling in his palm. “Your prohibitions no longer concern me, father. You couldn’t stop me. Not anymore.”

Telemont let his own power gather. Tendrils of shadows formed in the air, snaked around his hands, his staff.

“You’re mistaken, child,” he said, but wondered if Rivalen spoke the truth. He sensed the power in his son. Telemont had no doubt that he could hurt Rivalen, but he doubted he could kill him.

“He goes too far, Most High,” Hadrhune said, his voice high-pitched, his breathing heavy and fast. He did not lower his staff, did not release the defensive spell burgeoning in its crystal cap.

“Run along, lapdog,” Rivalen said. The ball of energy in his palm dissipated into nothingness.

“Most High—” Hadrhune began.

Rivalen clenched his fist and the crystal atop Hadrhune’s staff shattered with a pop, raining pieces onto the floor. Shadows bled from the tip of the wounded staff. Hadrhune cursed, wide-eyed.

“I said leave,” Rivalen said to him. “You aren’t needed here.”

Hadrhune’s eyes burned, but he ignored Rivalen. “Most High?”

“You may go, Hadrhune,” Telemont said, his eyes on his son.

My answer is usually some variant of, “They come from everywhere: history, music, conversations with friends, movies (the character of Will Munny from Eastwood’s film, Unforgiven, partially inspired the Erevis Cale stories), fiction I’m reading (a passing reference in a short story in The Weird inspired a few scenes from A Discourse in Steel), lyrics to songs, the list goes on.

But the from whence doesn’t really get at the process of how.  And how is as inscrutable as the Trinity.

When I first started writing professionally, I sometimes tried to force inspiration. I had a book deadline and by God my brain was going to give me some ideas right fucking now or I was going to hold my breath and starve it of oxygen!  That’ll teach it to hold out on me!

Of course, that didn’t work. At all. Ever. Instead it created an enormous amount of self-induced stress, which only increased as I watched days tick away and the deadline get closer and closer. And stress, of course, is not conducive to the creation of great ideas, which led to even less inspiration, which led to even more stress, which ultimately left me a twitchy mess who constantly held my breath.  Stupid, stupid brain!  Take that!

Then one day I realized something — for me, inspiration always comes, always, but it comes at its own pace. I just needed to relax, trust myself, and let the back brain do its thing.  The challenge was staying patient, because “trusting myself” sometimes took a fair amount of time and looked a lot like “doing nothing.”  And indeed it was like doing nothing, at least consciously.  My job at that stage was to go about my day while my back brain simmered behind the scenes. Invariably my subconscious eventually settled on some idea and when it did that idea would bubble up to my conscious mind, at which time I’d jump onto the nearest computer or recording device and capture it.  That would lead to more ideas, rinse and repeat.  Worked (and works) like a charm.

So, the upshot is that my process is really not much of a process at all. It’s basically the slacker motto: “Just chill, bro.”  And it works for me.  I stay patient, I trust myself, and eventually the idea shows up.

Intro:

Also, I’m not a Beachbody Coach.  I don’t even like people that much, so how could I be a coach?  Long and short: I’m not being compensated for this. That said, if you click any of the links in this post or anywhere else on my site, it’ll take you to Amazon.  If you then buy something on Amazon (any damn thing, up to and including sex toys; hey, you get no judgment from me, pal; I’m just sayin’), then I get a little spiff.  Doesn’t increase your price, and I like spiffs.  I also like to say “spiff.”  It’s fun; try it.  Spiff.  Spiff.  See?

So, I started the P90X program because I wanted to get more fit. I stuck with it because I saw results (again, you can read about those here). I also had more energy, and, candidly, I liked it.  It’s just part of my routine now.  I work it in between nightly rituals designed to summon the Old Ones and cast the world into darkness.

Anyway, I figured I’d give a short review/commentary of the individual workouts that I’m doing on this run through the program.  I’m going to aim for one review every two weeks or so, if my writing schedule allows.  Even if you’re not into working out, maybe you’ll find them fun or informative or not-quite-as-bad-as-gouging-out-your-eyes-with-a-spork.

Right now I’m doing a hybrid P90X-P90X2 program that I found on the internet.  Because really, what could possibly go wrong with doing an exercise program concocted by some random dude on the internet?  Exactly.  Everything posted on the internet is gold, pure gold!

So, the first post in this series is a review of Plyocide.  Now possibly you think “Plyocide” means “death by jumping,” “death to jumpers,” or maybe, “jump to your death,” – it’s kind of hard to say – but what it really means, in a language I just made up (let’s call it Kempsprechen) is “Holy shit do my ass muscles hurt.”

Onward.

The Pretty People (aka the Personnel):  So who’s in this pain-bringing, sweat-inducing bounce house from Hell? Tony Horton, of course (aka Aaal, the Hater of Life and Bringer of Pain), but also Mark Briggs, Traci Morrow, and Ricardo the Dreamy Spanish Dude.  If these folks were a D&D adventuring party, Tony would be the leader, a cleric of the God of Cajoling, Mark would be the burly fighter, Traci would be the spunky Elven rogue/wizard, and Ricardo would be the suave bard. The dynamic between the cast members is good.  Traci laughs at every damned thing Tony says, but mostly everyone is too gassed for chatter.

The Pain (aka The Workout):  Plyocide is P90X2’s answer to Plyometrics(from P90X).  Plyocide is shorter than Plyometrics (warmup to cool down is about 56 minutes, but the actual time spent doing plyo is a bit over 30 minutes), but Plyocide increases the intensity of each exercise.  I like that.  The workout is over sooner (nice when you’re on a tight schedule) and you’ve packed a lot of punch into your sweaty, weeping-filled minutes of pain.  I should add here that I don’t foam roll in the warmup (I skip it but foam rolling is a good thing; I just do it on recovery days) and I do my own, shorter stretching/cool-down at the end.  Because of those modifications, I shorten the overall duration of the workout ten or twelve minutes.

Plyocide consists of five rounds of four moves each, with breaks between rounds of 30-45 seconds.  Each round starts with a non-plyometric exercise (usually a balance/strength move) and follows that with three plyometric (i.e. jumping) exercises.   Unlike Plyometrics from P90X, Plyocide pairs each plyometric  exercise with some other move that involves a different muscle group.  So, instead of doing “just” Mary Katherine lunges (as in Plyometrics), which is a kind of leaping lunge, alternating legs, you do Killer Mary Katherine lunges, which has the same leaping lunge, but also has you holding a medicine ball and swinging it from hip to hip as you jump.  The pairings add a lot to the movements.

Here are the rounds.  You can view videos of all these moves on Youtube, so I’m not going to embed them here.  If you’re curious, have a looksee:

1.            Wide Leg Tiptoe Squat, Killer Katherine Lunge, Fast Feet Chair Jump, and Slalom Line Jump.

Ah, round one. At this point you’re thinking:  “It’s only twenty moves!  Pshaw!  A baby could do it!”  And then you do 40 Killer Katherine Lunges and you’re thinking:  “Dear God, there are eighteen more moves! No one can do this!”

Of this first round, I found the Killer Katherines the toughest move, though the Fast Feet Chair Jump (go into half-chair stance, arms up, and run rapidly in place, then jump every time Tony Horton decides he hates you and yells “jump”) really gets the heart rate up.  Slalom Line Jump is almost a rest exercise after the previous two moves.  On to round two.

 2.            Warrior 3 Lunge, Jack-in-the Box Knee Tuck, Think Drill, and Spartan Squat Lunge

I always feel like Warrior 3 (this is a Yoga position, if I’m speaking Greek to you) is ironically named.  No self-respecting warrior would ever get themselves in that position.  It should be called, “Jesus, I’m a Shitty Warrior 1.”  In any event, it’s a hard position to hold, and to go from lunge to holding it for a beat is tough.  The Jack-in-box Knee tuck is the toughest move this round.  You crouch, chest up, butt down, and touch the floor with the tips of your fingers, then leap up, bringing your knees up and slapping them with your hands.  Repeat until you die or quit.  The Think Drill is much like the Fast Feet Chair Jump from round one, but without the jump, and with arm and leg positions changing throughout (“arms up, arms out, legs in, legs out, show the rabbit;” that last is not a reference to a sexual toy (I know how your mind works, see?).   The Spartan Squat Lunge is a combined one legged squat, leaping lunge.  The beauty of this move is that every time I raise my fist I get a Leonidas scowl, and shout, “THIS IS SPARTA,” while I imagine kicking Tony Horton into that pit.  On to round three.

3.            Super Skater Kick, Depth Charge, Frog Burpee Hop, and 1-Leg Slalom

I found round 3 (and round 4) easier than 1 and 2, which is a good thing, because if they’d been harder, I’d still be weeping, lo, unto this very hour!  All I want to say about round 3 is that I don’t have a plyo box to do the Depth Charge so I just jump around.  And if I had a plyo box, I’d hit my head on the basement ceiling, which would require renaming the exercise “Mama Said Knock You Out!”  (that there’s an LL Cool J reference for the kewl kidz). I’ll also add that the Frog Burpee Hop will gas you (it’s a burpee, with the push up, then a leap with elbows to knees).  And why the Hell are burpees called “burpees,” anyway?  Burpee sounds like the name of a children’s cartoon character that has excess gas.  Every episode ends with Burpee burping and cutely putting his hands to his lips while all the other characters smile and say, “Oh, Burpee!”  His brother, Fartee, is not discussed in polite company.   On to round 4.

 4.            1-Leg Squat, Surfer Spin, Power 90 Cross Hop, and Wide Leg Jump Press w/ Med Ball

At this point, even Horton has his hands on his knees.  Fortunately, this is the easiest of the rounds.  1 legged squat?  Just some balance.  Pshaw.  Surfer Spin?  Easy peasy. Cross hop?  Don’t bring me that weak shit.  Jump Press with a Med Ball?  All right, that one’s kind of tough, but it’s the last one in the round so I manage.

 5.            Launcher Lunge, Toe Tap 360, Flying Fighter Kick, and Set Sprint Plank Plyo Jump

So this is it.  The last round.  I’m gasping, sweating, cursing at the demon Horton.  Somehow Traci is still smiling.  WTF? I begin to think that she could be an android.   Anyway, I’ve only got four more moves to go and I can handle that.  Launcher Lunge and Toe Tap 360 are not hard, and the flying fighter kick is basically that kick you did when you were a teenager and wanted to show everyone that you “knew” karate, so it’s kind of fun.  But the Set, Sprint, Plank, Plyo, Jump?  That shit is hard right at the end.  I do it as Tony calls it.  Take a three point stance, sprint, fall to plank, plyo push up, back to sprint, set, sprint, jump, jump, set, plank, plyo, plyo, SHUT UP, HORTON! SHUT UP!

And then…you’re done except for the cool down and stretch.  That’s Plyocide.

The Pithy (aka Miscellaneous observations):  Plyocide is the only pure cardio routine in P90X2. Until you’ve done it a few times, you’ll be really, really sore the day after.  But it’s really an excellent workout.

Is it just me or does Tony interact weirdly with the women in the cast? It’s like he’s uncomfortable around attractive women.  You get your shit together, Horton.  When you talk to the lovely ladies, you got to BRING IT!

I’ll sum up by saying that Plyocide is not as much fun as sex, but it’s more fun than being flayed alive.

First, from deep within the rusty, metallic hell from which the robot overlords of Angry Robot Books look with disdain upon the world of flesh, comes The Blue Blazes, by Chuck Wendig.  Chuck has a unique writing voice that I very much enjoy.  From the back matter:

Meet Mookie Pearl. Criminal underworld? He runs in it. Supernatural underworld? He hunts in it. Nothing stops Mookie when he’s on the job. But when his daughter takes up arms and opposes him, something’s gotta give…

Then, in the galaxy far, far away, we have Into the Void, by Tim Lebbon.  This book is set in the very distant past, apparently exploring the origin of the Jedi Order.  From the back matter:

On the planet Tython, the ancient Je’daii order was founded. And at the feet of its wise Masters, Lanoree Brock learned the mysteries and methods of the Force—and found her calling as one of its most powerful disciples. But as strongly as the Force flowed within Lanoree and her parents, it remained absent in her brother, who grew to despise and shun the Je’daii, and whose training in its ancient ways ended in tragedy.
 
Now, from her solitary life as a Ranger keeping order across the galaxy, Lanoree has been summoned by the Je’daii Council on a matter of utmost urgency. The leader of a fanatical cult, obsessed with traveling beyond the reaches of known space, is bent on opening a cosmic gateway using dreaded dark matter as the key—risking a cataclysmic reaction that will consume the entire star system. But more shocking to Lanoree than even the prospect of total galactic annihilation, is the decision of her Je’daii Masters to task her with the mission of preventing it. Until a staggering revelation makes clear why she was chosen: The brilliant, dangerous madman she must track down and stop at any cost is the brother whose death she has long grieved—and whose life she must now fear.

In the Forgotten Realms, we have the mass market re-release of Elminster Enraged, from the unparalleled creative mind (and pen) or Ed Greenwood.  From the back matter:

Commanded by the vestige of Mystra to work together, Manshoon and Elminster engage instead in a ferocious battle that sends the Sage plummeting into the Underdark as a cloud of ashes. Elminster soon inhabits the body of a fallen dark elf, so that he can begin carrying out Mystra’s orders to rally Cormyr’s Wizards of War, seek blueflame items to mend immense rifts throughout the realms that are releasing deadly monsters, and prevent the ancient Primordials from rising and unleashing their rage. But his sworn archenemy, Manshoon, has plans as well: to conquer Cormyr and be the new Emperor, and hunt down the Sage’s clones. The battles are fierce, the stakes have never been higher, and the fate of Cormyr is on the line. Meanwhile, War Wizards are being mysteriously assassinated . . .

That there’s some excellent novels.  Read and enjoy.

First, May’s excerpt is up.  No spoilers, so have a read and see what the boys are up to.

Second, don’t forget to enter the A Discourse in Steel/The Godborn drawing (to win a signed copy of The Godborn).  Details are here.

Third, enter the Goodreads giveaway for a chance to win a signed copy of A Discourse in Steel: A Tale of Egil and Nix.  Here’s the link (and maybe also add Discourse to your Goodreads bookshelf):

Goodreads Book Giveaway

A Discourse in Steel

by Paul S. Kemp

Giveaway ends June 25, 2013.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Fourth, have a great weekend.  :-)

Previous monthly excerpts are here and here.

______________________________

Nix took a length of thin, strong rope from his satchel of needful things – he always carried several lengths of the best line he could buy – and bound the man’s hands and ankles. Then he went back up to the bar, half-filled a tankard with ale, returned to the cellar and threw it in the man’s face. The man sputtered and blinked awake. He had small eyes, too close together, a large nose and a narrow chin specked with a day’s growth of whiskers.

He eyed Nix, Egil, the cellar, swallowed hard. Nix could see thoughts moving behind his eyes.

“Yeah, you’re in a bit of it,” Nix said. “I’ve been there.”

“It was just a burn job,” the man said, his voice nasally. “I do it, I get paid, and I don’t know nothing more than that.”

Egil harrumphed and Nix tsked.

“Burn jobs don’t call for barring doors, now do they?”

The man colored but his expression remained defiant.

A symbol hung from a leather lanyard around the man’s neck. Nix grabbed it, yanked it off, and eyed the charm: a stiletto with a coin balanced on the tip. Aster’s symbol. Nix shared a knowing look with Egil.

“This here’s a guild boy, Egil.”

“Fakkin’ sneak priests and fools,” Egil said.

“I don’t know nothing about a guild,” the man said.

Nix tossed the charm at the man and hit him in his overlarge nose. “Not too smart, are you?”

“That’s just something I found,” the man said, pointing with his chin at the charm. He looked up at Egil’s head, at the Eye of Ebenor. “But speakin’ of fools and priests.”

“He’s a funny one,” Egil said, and glared. “I don’t like funny ones.”

“And speaking of tattoos,” Nix said. He pushed the man prone, rolled him over, checked the man’s hands, his arms, cut off his shirt to bare his chest.

“You at least gonna buy me a drink first?” the man said. “You don’t even know my name.”

“Your name’s slubber, and that’s clear enough,” Nix said, and pulled him back into a sitting position. “No magic ink, which makes you too dumb for the Committee, yeah?”

“The what?” the man said, all innocence.

“Who gave the order?”

“Order? I was offered coin. That’s it. I don’t even know the names of them others I was with.”

Egil said, “The one burned alive on the street is named ‘pig meat’.”

“Hard way to go,” the man said, shaking his head.

“There are harder ways,” Egil said, his tone ominous.

“I’d ask you why you put a flame to the inn–” Nix said.

“Our inn,” Egil said.

“Our inn,” Nix corrected. “But I already know.”

The man sneered. “Let me tell you something, slubbers. This ain’t no inn. This is a shop for running slags and all-fours-boys.”

Nix cuffed him on the head, hard. “Mind your tongue, prick. You’re already on the blade’s edge.”

The man glared up at Nix, his rat nose twitching.

“What do we need from this slubber?” Nix asked Egil.

“Ask him where the guild house is,” Egil said.

The man guffawed.

Nix faced the guild man. “You heard the big, intimidating, ill-tempered man. Where’s the guild house?”

“I don’t nothing about a guild house.” The man’s rat face turned sly. “But I wager that’s not something safe to know ’less you’re supposed to. I wager knowing something like that when you shouldn’t might, I don’t know, get your place burned down. Lot o’ things like that.”

Nix grabbed the man by his hair. “I find it best not to anger the priest.”

The man glared and seemed inclined to keep talking, so Nix released him.

“As you will, then.”

“I hear the guild,” the man said. “They keep coming and coming until things finish up like they want them finished. And they come back for those that hurt their men. That’s what I hear.”

“Nobody’s coming for you,” Egil said.

The man jutted out his chin. “We’ll see.”

Egil approached the man and despite his superficial insouciance, the man quailed at the priest’s approach. But Egil only turned him roughly around so that his back was to the door. Nix looked a question at him. Egil mouthed the word “Mere” and Nix understood. He nodded and Egil exited the cellar to get Mere.

After he left, Nix said, “I always heard guild boys were competent. Then I see a cock-up like this and have to wonder.”

“Fak you. You got lucky.”

“Tell you something else,” Nix said, his tone serious. He grabbed the man by the hair, jerked his head back, put his lips to his ear. “There were twenty people in this inn and I care about all of them. You and your crew will answer for that.”

“You have no idea what you’re doing here, bungholes.”

Nix punched him in the head, knocking him on his side. He struggled to keep his voice under control. “I know exactly what I’m doing. The guild is shite to me.”

The man winced at the pain, blinked, licked his lips. “We’ll see.”

“There’s only one thing saving you, slubber, and that’s that I’ve had enough of regrets in recent days. Hard to say with the priest, though. He’s not as forgiving as me. Strange in a priest, don’t you think?”

The man grinned. “No. I know a few priests just like that.”

The cellar door creaked open and Egil walked in, Merelda small behind him. Nix eyed Egil, who nodded, then Merelda, who eyed the prisoner. Nix gave her a nod of encouragement. Egil came around to face the guild man.

“Where’s the guildhouse?” Egil asked.

The man spit. “That again? I told you–”

Merelda closed her eyes, furrowed her brow. Nix imagined her reaching into the guild man’s mind.

“What is this?” the man said, blinking rapidly. “What is–”

“Where is the guildhouse?” Egil said. “Tell us.”

“I don’t–” The man’s words slurred. His eyes rolled. “I can’t–”

Mere put a hand to her temple. Nix imagined her reaching in his mind, grabbing at his thoughts, unspooling them like weaver’s thread.

Egil leaned over him. “Where. Is. The. Guildhouse?”

The man screamed, shook his head, rocked back and forth.

Merelda took a step closer to him, her pale face wrinkled in concentration. A drop of blood leaked from one of her nostrils but she seemed not to notice.

“No, no, no!” said the man.

“It’s on Mandin Way,” Mere said, her voice cold, her eyes still closed, her face still twisted up with effort. “Used to be an inn called the Squid. I can… see the layout.”

“I know it,” Nix said.

“Who is that?” the man said, trying to look over his shoulder. “Is that the bitch faytor?”

Merelda took another step toward the man. Blood flowed from both her nostrils.

The man fell to his side and shrieked, long and loud, and Nix hoped there were no Watch patrols on the street outside.

“There are many guards there, always,” Mere said. “There are two levels under it, a chapel, training rooms, safe rooms, a torture chamber, cells. The sewers near Mandin Way and a guarded tunnel in the bank of the Meander give access to the lower levels.

She took another step closer to the man, who now moaned and writhed on the ground, blood coming from his own nose. Merelda’s nosebleed worsened but she showed no sign of stopping.

Nix put a hand on her arm. “That’s enough.”

She whirled on him, projected, He tried to kill us!

He winced at the anger in her mental voice. “I know. You’re hurting yourself, though. We have what we need. That’s enough. That’s enough.”

Egil took her by the arm. “It’s all right. You did good.”

She stared at them, blinking, her eyes welling with tears. She looked down at the man, who moaned and muttered in a puddle of snot and blood and spit.

“Fak him,” she said, tears falling down her cheeks”

“Aye, that,” Egil said softly, and led her to the cellar door. He closed it behind her and he and Nix shared a look. Nix nodded, went to the guild man and pulled him up and around. Blood smeared his face below his nose.

“You don’t look half as amused as you did. Huh.”

The guildsman’s eyes twisted into a glare. “Fak you. You don’t know what you done here. Fak you.”

Nix sighed. “You’d think more people would fak me. I do have a certain charm. Alas, the world is unfair.”

The man spit snot and blood. “You keep on with this and it’s gonna get more unfair for and yours real quick-like. You hear? Now let me go.”

Nix looked over to Egil, eyebrows raised. “He’s an arrogant prick, isn’t he? Even bound and bleeding and after what just happened and he still can’t shut his hole. Is this what it’s like to talk to me?”

Egil shrugged and grunted, his hard eyes fixed on the guildsman.

Nix looked back at the guildsman. “Usually I’m on the other end of this, hands bound, bloody, wondering what’s going to happen next. I like this better.”

“You won’t for long,” the guildsman said.

“This really is no time get all cocky, yeah? Makes me irritable. And I’m not even easily irritated. My friend there, though, the big priest, he is easily irritated. He looks downright irritable this very moment. Irked, even. So.” Nix considered, made up his mind, and stood. “He’s going to beat you now.”

The man’s eyes went to Egil’s hulking form, the priest’s ham fists, and his arrogance crumbled. “What’s that now?”

“Parts of you are gonna bleed,” Nix said. “Probably that nose again. Other parts will probably break. But unfair is the world, yeah? Woe and alack.”

“Wait, now. Wait,” the man said, struggling against his bonds as Egil stepped toward him. “That ain’t necessary, is it? We could–”

“Oh, but it is necessary,” Nix said, his voice the soft, cold sound of a blade slipping its scabbard. “And I’m going to tell you why – because you fakkin’ deserve it for what you did, you slubber prick bunghole.”

“There’s no need for torture, now!”

Nix grabbed the man by his shirt and gave him a shake.

“This isn’t torture, slubber. We already know what we need to know. This is punishment.” He stepped aside to make room for Egil, then put his hands on his hips and glared contempt at the guildsman. “Make it hurt bad, Egil.”

“They’ll come for you! Both of you for this! And everyone else in this fakkin’ inn.”

“No, they won’t,” Egil said, grabbing the man by his shirt and jerking him to his feet. “Because we’re coming for them. You boys fakked up, crossing us.”

The man grinned darkly, his teeth stained with blood. “You go at the guildhouse, you die. You won’t come back from that.”

Nix said, “I was just telling someone the other day that our lot in life seems to be to go where others say we shouldn’t.”

Egil’s first punch put a few teeth and a lot of blood on the cellar floor. His second cracked ribs and left the guildsman crumpled on the floor, moaning.

Nix watched the rest of it unfold, knowing they were both giving themselves more to regret, more they’d someday have to look back on and face squarely. He decided he could live with that.

The Contest

I’m going to give away five (5) signed copies of The Godborn in hardcover format.

Who Can Enter 

The contest is open to everyone worldwide but enter only once, and please, please, please note the following before you enter:  I’ll cover the shipping cost for U.S. addressees, but if you live outside the US, I’ll ask you to cover the difference (via Paypal) between the US shipping price ($6.00USD), and whatever it costs to ship where you’re located.  Apologies for that, but if I don’t do it that way, shipping costs have the potential to creep up a bit more than I’d like, especially with five books going out.   Also note that I’ll ship the signed copies at or around the release date for The Godborn(October 1).  Winners won’t get their copy early (or, if you do, it’ll be a day or two early, depending on when I get some copies from WotC).  They will, however, get a signed copy for free (or for a fraction of the shipping cost, if you’re outside the U.S.).  Or almost for free.  See below.

How to Enter

I mentioned I was going to tie my two releases together, yes?  I believe I did. So, to enter the giveaway, buy A Discourse in Steel and send some evidence of the purchase to my email address at paulsvantekemp@yahoo.com.  Include your name and address in the email. If you’ve already pre-ordered Discourse (and I know many of you have), that counts and that’s awesome.  Thank you.  Just dredge up the online receipt and send it in the email along with the other info.

Confession.

Now, I realize you’re all quite bright and know exactly what I’m doing here, but I’m happy to own up to it explicitly:  The Godborn is likely to sell far more copies than A Discourse in Steel, so I’m trying with this contest to convince some of you who are my Realms readers but not (yet) my Egil and Nix readers, to give the boys from Dur Follin a go.   Besides, the tales of Egil and Nix will give you something to read while you wait for The Godborn.

When Should You Enter? 

The contest starts right….NOW, and will remain open until the release date of A Discourse in Steel, which is June 25th, when I’ll announce the winners.

I hope you’ll enter and look forward to hearing from you.  :-)

Bald+hammers = Egil
Sly+blade = Nix

]]> http://paulskemp.com/blog/drawing-to-win-a-signed-copy-of-the-godborn-a-discourse-in-godborn/feed/ 13 http://paulskemp.com/blog/excerpt-from-the-godborn-mephistopheles/ http://paulskemp.com/blog/excerpt-from-the-godborn-mephistopheles/#comments Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:33:22 +0000 Paul S. Kemp http://paulskemp.com/?p=2814 I’m happy to report that Wizards of the Coast has authorized me to post monthly excerpts from my forthcoming novel, The Godborn (book II of the Sundering Series), in the lead up to its October release.  Huzzah!

I’ll be posting six excerpts, one each month through and including September.  None will contain spoilers and each will be between 900 and 1,800 words. I think what I’ll do is feature a different point-of-view character in … Read the rest

I’m happy to report that Wizards of the Coast has authorized me to post monthly excerpts from my forthcoming novel, The Godborn (book II of the Sundering Series), in the lead up to its October release.  Huzzah!

I’ll be posting six excerpts, one each month through and including September.  None will contain spoilers and each will be between 900 and 1,800 words. I think what I’ll do is feature a different point-of-view character in each excerpt, so you get a sense of the players, the tone of the book, etc.

So, without further ado, I give you the first excerpt. This one features The Lord of Eighth, the Ruler of Cania, Mephistopheles himself.  I hope you enjoy.

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Glaciers as old as creation collided, vied, and splintered—the crack of ancient ice like the snap of dry bones. The smell of brimstone and burning souls wafted up from rivers of fire that veined the terrain. Cania’s freezing gusts bore the innumerable screams of the damned, spicing the air with their pain. Towering, insectoid gelugons, their white carapaces hard to distinguish from the ice, patrolled the banks of the rivers. Their appetite for agony was insatiable, and with their hooked polearms they ripped and tore at the immolated damned who flailed and shrieked in the flames.

Mephistopheles perched atop an ice-capped crag a quarter-league high and stared down at his realm of ice and fire and pain. Plains of jagged ice stretched away in all directions. Black mountains hazed with smoke scraped a glowing red sky lit by a distant, pale sun.

And he ruled it all. Or almost all of it.

His gaze fixed on the mound of shadow-shrouded ice that had defied his will for a century, and his eyes narrowed. His anger stirred the embers of his power, and the air crackled around him, baleful emanations of the divinity he’d stolen from the god, Mask.

Staring at the shadowy cairn, he sensed that events were picking up speed, fates being decided, events determined, but he couldn’t see them. Matters were fouled and he suspected the shadowy cairn had something to do with it.

“Permutations,” he said, his voice as deep and dark as a chasm. “Endless permutations.”

He had schemed for decades to obtain a fraction of the divine power he now held, intending to use the power he’d gained in a coup against Asmodeus, the Lord of Nessus, a coup that would have resulted in Mephistopheles ruling the Nine Hells. But events on one of the worlds of the Prime had made a joke of his plans.

The Spellplague had ripped through the world of Toril, recombining it with its sister world, Abeir, and causing chaos among gods and godlings. A half-murdered god had literally fallen through the Astral Sea and into the Ninth Hell. Asmodeus had finished the murder and absorbed the divinity.

Mephistopheles, who had plotted for decades to become divine, had managed to take only a fraction of a fraction of a lesser god’s power, while the Lord of the Ninth had become a full god through luck. By chance. And Mephistopheles was, once more, second in Hell.

Worst of all, he feared that Asmodeus had recently learned of his plans. Mephistopheles’s spies in Nessus’s court spoke of mustering legions, of Asmodeus’s growing ire. A summons had reached Mephistar, Mephistopheles’s iron keep. Asmodeus’s words had been carried on the vile, forked tongue of the Lord of Nessus’s sometime-messenger, the she-bitch succubus, Malcanthet.

“His Majesty, the Supreme Overlord of the Hells, Asmodeus the Terrible, requires His Grace’s presence before his throne in Nessus.”

“Supreme, you said?”

“Shall I tell His Majesty that you take issue with his title?”

Mephistopheles bit back his retort. “He sends me Hell’s harlot to convey a summons? To what end is my presence required?”

Malcanthet had ignored the question, offering only, “His Majesty wished me to inform you that time is of the essence.”

“And my time is limited. I will attend when I’m able.”

“You will attend within a fortnight or His Majesty will be forced to assume that you are in rebellion. Those are the words of His Majesty.”

Mephistopheles had glared at her while his court had muttered and tittered. “Get out! Now!”

Malcanthet had bowed, smirking, and exited the court, leaving Mephistopheles to stew in uncertainties, his court to gossip in possibilities.

Mephistopheles had managed to put off a reckoning with Asmodeus for decades. He’d made excuse after excuse, but the Lord of the Ninth’s patience had finally worn thin. Mephistopheles had little time and few options. He wasn’t ready. Far below, the cairn of ice mocked him. Shadows leaked from it, dribbled out of its cracks in languid streams. Often he’d tried to burn his way to the bottom of the cairn, but the ice would not yield. He’d had hundreds of whip-driven devils tear into the mound with weapons and tools, all to no avail. He’d attempted to magically transport himself within the hill and failed. He could not even scry what lay at its bottom.

And yet he had his suspicions about what lay under the shadow-polluted ice.

“Erevis Cale.”

Saying the name kindled his anger to flame.

Mephistopheles had torn out Cale’s throat on Cania’s ice and taken the divine spark of Mask then possessed by Cale. Then, while Mephistopheles had been distracted by his triumph, Cale’s ally, Drasek Riven, himself possessed of another divine spark, had materialized and nearly decapitated Mephistopheles.

The pain remained fresh in Mephistopheles’s mind. His regeneration had taken hours, and by then, Cale’s body had been covered by the cairn that vexed him so.

Unable to destroy the offending cairn, finally Mephistopheles had simply forbade anyone from approaching it. Intricate, powerful wards allowed no one to go near it but Mephistopheles himself.

Staring at the cairn, his anger overflowed his control. He leaped from his perch and spread his wings—power and rage shrouding him. Millions of damned souls and lesser devils looked up and then down, cowering, sinking into their pain rather than look upon the Lord of Cania enraged.

He tucked his wings and plummeted toward the cairn, Erevis Cale’s tomb. He slammed into it with enough velocity and force to send a shock wave of power radiating outward in all directions. Snow and ice shards exploded into the air. The damned of Cania uttered a collective groan.

He looked down, his breathing like a bellows, his rage unabated. The hill remained unmarred—a mound of opaque ice veined with lines of shadow. He aimed his palms at the cairn’s surface and blasted the ice with hellfire. Flame and smoke poured from his hands, engulfing the cairn, the backblast cloaking him in fire and heat. He stood in its midst, unaffected, pouring forth power at the object of his hate. Around him, ice hissed, fogging the air as it melted. Shadows poured from the hill in answer, a dark churn that coated him in night.

The ice renewed itself as fast as his fires could melt it. The shadows swirled amid the storm of power and snow and ice—mocked him, defied him. He channeled fire and power at the hill, relenting only long enough to let the shadows disperse, the spray of ice and snow to settle. And when it did, he saw what he always saw: the unmarred cairn.

It was protected somehow and he did not understand it. Something was happening, something he could not see. Mask was in the center of it, the cairn was in the center of it, and he could not so much as melt its ice.

And now—and now—Asmodeus was coming for him.

Ropes of shadow leaked from thin cracks in the cairn’s ice and spiraled around Mephistopheles’s body. He threw back his head, stretched his wings, flexed his claws, and roared his frustration at the cloud-shrouded red sky. The sound boomed across his realm, the thunder of his rage. Distant glaciers cracked in answer. Volcanoes spat ash into the sky.

When at last he was spent, he fell into a crouch atop the cairn, put his chin in his hand, and considered his options.

He saw only two courses: He could ask forgiveness of Asmodeus and abase himself before the Lord of Nessus, foreswearing rebellion, or he could obtain more power, enough to equal Asmodeus’s, and so empowered, pursue his planned coup.

He much preferred the latter. And yet if he moved to obtain more divine power, he’d be moving blindly. Mask had put in place some kind of scheme—was the cairn not evidence of that?—and Mephistopheles did not want to stumble into it and inadvertently serve Mask’s ends. Mephistopheles feared losing the divinity he’d already gained in an effort to gain more, for he had no doubt that Mask had plotted for his own eventual return.

But he had little choice. Time had grown short. Over the last hundred years he’d scoured the multiverse for information about Erevis Cale and Mask, trying to suss out Mask’s play so that he could thwart it. He’d tortured mortal and immortal beings alike, eavesdropped on the whispered conversations of exarchs and godlings, listened to the secrets carried in the planar currents, wrung what information he could from the nether with his divinations.

And he’d learned only one thing, one tantalizing clue: Erevis Cale had a son.

He’d come to believe over the years that the son had something to do with the secret buried under the ice, his ice, that the son was at the center of Mask’s scheme, and that if he could find the son, he could end Mask’s plans, whatever they were, at a stroke. Then he’d have had the freedom to move against the two men who, like Mephistopheles, held fractions of Mask’s power.

He’d pacted with many mortals over the decades, promising them rewards if they brought word of Erevis Cale’s son. He’d bargained with so many that he’d lost track of them. But none had ever located Cale’s son. It was as though the son had simply disappeared.

And now events had, at last, outrun Mephistopheles’s ability to plan ahead of them. He could no longer wait to learn the full picture of Mask’s scheme. He could no longer spare time searching for Cale’s son. Asmodeus was coming for him, as he did for any who dared plot rebellion. Mephistopheles would need more power to face the Lord of Nessus. And he knew where he could get it.

Drasek Riven and Rivalen Tanthul each possessed a spark of Mask’s stolen divinity. If Mephistopheles killed them, he could take their divinity and face Asmodeus as a peer.

He looked down at the cairn, imagined Erevis Cale’s frozen body buried somewhere under its ice. He tapped the ice with a clawed finger.

“I haven’t forgotten your son. And I won’t. And your dead god won’t be coming back, whatever his schemes.”

For answer, only more shadows.

He shook them off, stood, cupped his hands before his mouth, and put a message in the wind for Duke Adonides, his majordomo, blowing it in the direction of Mephistar. The gust tore over Cania’s icy plains.

“Prepare the legions to march on the Shadowfell. Drasek Riven is to die.”

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