Rune’s Folly
Garen Glazier
Publication date: February 5th 2019
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Young Adult
Garen Glazier
Publication date: February 5th 2019
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Young Adult
By day, Tansy McCoy is a florist making charmed bouquets for the citizens of Junonia, capital of the Kingdom of Terranmar. By night, she’s an assassin and the keeper of the Dangerous Garden where deadly blooms grow. Together with the town tailor, butcher, baker, and metalsmith (just don’t call her a candlestick maker), she is part of the Guild, a secret group of spell-wielding thieves and mercenaries. Their task: consolidate all that remains of the realm’s fading magic under the ruthless King Zeno’s control.
Impetuous loner Tansy chafes under her Guild demands. She longs to quit her town and trade and head for the hills. Unfortunately, King Zeno has other plans. He wants to marry off his daughter to Terranmar’s famously reclusive wizard, Rune Hallows, and he’s willing to have the Guild kidnap him to make it happen. Fail to deliver the wizard and the consequences will be swift and deadly.
Reluctant but determined, Tansy sets out on the long journey to faraway Wentletrap and Rune’s desolate tower by the sea. To get there she must cross a swamp full of sinister surprises, battle a werewolf, and outrace a bloodthirsty band of revenants, while she wrestles with her own magical powers that seem to be expanding in unpredictable ways.
But reaching Rune’s tower is only the beginning. When Tansy learns the real reason behind the king’s contest, she’ll need to decide whether to give in to the growing forces of magic ready to reclaim Terranmar or embrace her newfound powers to save the kingdom.
Excerpt
“Tansy, stop!”
She
heard a voice, deep and angry, somewhere far away. It echoed around the edges
of her consciousness, but remained just a whine in comparison to the great wave
of sound that flooded her body from head to toe and carried on its crest a
single word: “Makaria.”
And
the wave rolled and crashed, rolled and crashed, and then it was less a wave
and more a song pitched low and resonant. The song called to her with that one
word, Makaria, and she had to follow, realized she been following it since she
left Junonia, maybe before. Maybe forever. And now she was so close. She
wouldn’t be stopped. Couldn’t be stopped.
“Stop!”
There
was a hand on her wrist, warm and steady, and the constant tolling of that word
inside her quieted. She could hear herself think again.
“Let go, Rune Hallows,” she yelped, but she
was more surprised by the energy she felt in his fingers on her skin than
anything.
The
wizard had stopped her forward progress and whipped her around to face him so
that their bodies pressed together. There was a moment, when her soft curves
met his chest, when her eyes met his angry stare, that made her heart skip
faster. He held his breath, and she thought he might have felt it too, but then
he started screaming at her.
“How
dare you!” he shouted. “Years of work. Years! A creation that means more to me
than you’ll ever know, and you just commandeered it. Without a word or a
moment’s hesitation.”
His
eyes were bright, his lips drawn over his teeth as they gnashed together and
around the words that he spat into her face. She winced at the grip of his
fingers pressing hard into her wrists.
“You
stole that moment from me, and you don’t even know what you’ve done. You had to
have felt the energy of the tower when you came stumbling in through the wall.
Something, I might add, that shouldn’t have even been possible. I was waiting
to place that last shell because there is more to this than either of us
understand.”
“You
were waiting because you were afraid,” Tansy said, leaning into his aggression,
refusing to be intimidated by his anger. She met his gaze, felt his warm
breath, fast and ragged, on her lips.
“And
what do I have to be afraid of?” he said.
“This
place, for starters,” Tansy replied, and she pushed away from him, letting her
eyes wander the strange landscape they now found themselves in. “It doesn’t
feel…natural.”
After
her feet left the casement of Rune’s tower window it had felt like falling, and
her heart had plummeted into her stomach. Then a moment later, in the manner of
a dream, the fall seemed more like floating. Suddenly, she was sliding through
a darkness so absolute it seemed to penetrate her skin and fill her lungs. An
icy panic had gripped her before the world that surrounded them now had
gradually taken shape, and her racing heart slowed enough for her to realize
she was once again on solid ground.
They
were in the middle of a vast expanse of too-green grass underneath a too-blue
sky that bore down on them in a way that skies back in Terranmar never did.
There was a tree with a twisted trunk some distance away, but otherwise there
was only grass stretching to a distant horizon in every direction. Nothing
about it was immediately distressing, but Tansy couldn’t help but feel a real
sense of foreboding as though her gut were warning her of things her eyes
couldn’t yet see.
“Where
are we?” she breathed.
“The
Otherworld,” Rune replied, his tone full of dread as his eyes scanned the odd
landscape, wariness pinching his face into a frown. “This is no place for
humans. At least not of the living variety.”
Author Bio:
I have always called Seattle home and find the perpetual gloom to be a wonderful writing ally. I like coffee shops, bookstores, dancing in my living room and singing in my car. The opening scene of Up makes me cry. Three Amigos makes me laugh. Fashion magazines, croissants, and long, long baths are my guilty pleasures. They might occur separately or together. I prefer boxing classes to yoga, and I get some of my best ideas when I'm running. I loved school and spent more time than one really should getting a business degree in marketing and a master's in art history. In an ideal world I'd go to bed at 2am and wake up at 10am. I've never been an early bird, and I feel strongly that alarm clocks kill dreams.
Learn more at garenglazier.com.
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