Almost as good as a good story is a good story behind the good story itself, which we suppose would make a good story better and a better story best. Sorry. That one made our brains hurt too.

Today's feature is the story behind the story of our very own R. Perez de Pereda's sword and sorcery novel, The Many Deaths of Cyan Wraithwate, which, if you haven't checked it out yet, you really should. It's a great fantasy novel that almost never was. 

Our story begins in Cuba in 1941 with nothing short of the author's  birth. Pereda was born at a time when then-democratic Cuba was experiencing unprecedented foreign investment under the presidency of Grau San Martin. The influx of foreign capital brought with it the pop culture items of the day, among them pulp fiction magazines, which young Pereda avidly read and collected. Far and away, his favorite were the Conan the Barbarian stories by Robert E. Howard.

Unfortunately, the good times would not last long. In 1956, Cuban Communist insurgents launched an uprising. Nowhere was safe -- the rebels holed up in the countryside and carried out bombing attacks on urban centers. All at once, the island nation became a dangerous place to live. Pereda, fifteen years old at the time, walked to school with his father's World War II 9mm Luger in his pocket. The gun was always unloaded -- Pereda's father never told him where he kept the magazines -- and Pereda hoped the sight of the gun alone would be enough to scare off anyone who meant him harm.

Two years later, the fight became all too personal for Pereda. He did things in furtherance of the anti-Communist movement which he was not comfortable sharing at the time of this writing. That notwithstanding, his fight was over by 1959, when the Communists assumed control of the country. He wasn't Communist Cuba's public enemy number one, but he was still too high on that list for his liking. He bought a one-way airplane ticket with the cash in his pocket and fled to Miami, leaving behind everyone and everything he ever loved.

With naught but the clothes on his back and a fair grasp of the English language, Pereda found work in a produce warehouse. Several years and several jobs later, he landed an entry-level position at a blue-chip company and worked his way up the corporate ladder. By the mid-1960's he was living the American Dream -- he had a wife, a car, and mortgage. He took up his old hobby of collecting the pulp magazines he enjoyed in his youth and rediscovered the fantastic adventures of Conan the Barbarian. It was about this time that he tried his hand at writing, and after two years of diligent work at the typewriter, in 1967 he had penned -- in his native Spanish -- The Many Deaths of Cyan Wraithwate. It was, in his estimation, a story of the sort he enjoyed growing up, replete with fantasy creatures and plenty of hack-and-slash action.

Miami in 1967 was a different time and place for the book publishing industry. Much as he tried, Pereda could not find anyone who would take his novel on. In a way, it was understandable -- he was an unknown author and had written a novel in Spanish. When news came later that year that he had a baby daughter on the way, he all but shelved his dreams of becoming a published author.

Fast forward to 2013. Pereda, since retired and now a grandfather of five, was looking through his filing cabinet for the deed to his home. After he'd scoured the filing cabinet but could not find the deed, he turned his attention to the desk in his study. There, at the bottom of a drawer, was his manuscript, where it had sat for over forty years. Even he had forgotten about it. Figuring he had nothing to lose in attempting to publish it, he searched the Internet for Miami-based publishers and found us.

Turning the manuscript into a paperback was a daunting task for two reasons. First, the text had to be translated from Spanish. A word-for-word translation would not have sufficed, as the product would have lost much of its wit and readability. Second, the prevailing conventions in both English and Spanish writing had changed in the intervening decades. Both are living languages, and some expressions that may have been chic in their time might today be considered trite. Now imagine encountering a concept or expression that has since fallen out of use in one language, then attempting to figure out what it means, then finding an English equivalent. Or, say you have a particular sentence structure that, in order for it to have maximum impact on the reader, has to follow a certain word order. Now translate that across forty years and from one language to another. It's not easy, but we're glad to have done the work.

Pereda today is seventy-three years old. He has lived long enough to see all that life held in store, or at least that's what he thought. Never in his wildest dreams did he think something he wrote as a young man would be shared with the world. Never did he suspect that his novel could transform from the story that almost wasn't to the novel that is.

Unbeknownst to him, Marco’s life teetered on the cusp of change.

Muttering curses under his breath, Marco trudged up the boardwalk with his backpack in tow. He was short on time and completely lost in the labyrinth that was Denrico’s seaport.

The merciless heat didn’t help either. His messenger’s uniform was crisply ironed this morning. If he wrung the sweat out of his shirt now he could irrigate a small farm for a day.

He cupped his eyes and scanned the pier ahead. Enormous trade galleons packed the crowded harbor. Never had Marco seen, much less set foot on, an oceangoing vessel. Today he had seen enough ships for a lifetime.

He slung his backpack across his opposite shoulder. The parcel inside was heavy. To make matters worse, it would be weeks before he could rid himself of its bulk. The parcel was addressed to Queen Catherine Saint-Saenz Lucinda of Avignary, and that was on the other side of the world.

A shout from nearby snagged his attention.

“Hey there, lad!”

Marco turned his head to look. An old crewman sauntered down the gangplank of a nearby ship. He was particularly ugly. Here was a man who looked like he threw rocks at beehives when he was a boy, except that the rocks were attached to a short stick, and the stick was still in his hand when the rocks hit the hives. His cleft chin extended beyond the arch of his nose, giving him a horrific underbite. He balanced a reed on his lips. When his jaws met to chew its stem, he looked as though he could sniff his chin.

The sailor planted himself in the center of the boardwalk, arms over his head as though signaling someone distant. “Hey!”

Marco held his breath as he approached. The sailor reeked of sweat. He hadn’t gone a step past when his backpack snagged, knocking him off balance.

“Whoa!” Marco yelled, whirling to face the old man.

The sailor’s eyebrows arched, resembling a pair of caterpillars on a twig. “Whoa yourself.”

Marco took a step forward. The old man put out his hand to stop him.

“Out of my way,” Marco said.

“That presumes you know where your way is.”

Marco stiffened at this affront. “You’d better have a good reason for obstructing Lord Amadis Eric’s mail.”

“Yup.” The sailor gnawed his reed.

“Well?”

"You don’t know where you’re headed.”

“You don’t either.”

"Don’t I?” The old man grinned a checkerboard pattern of missing teeth. Those teeth that remained were stained from years of neglect.

Marco tucked the backpack into his armpit. “What do you want?”

The sailor turned up his hands, palms out. “Meant no offense, lad. Old Turbo here only wants to help you. You look lost.”

“I am,” Marco admitted despite himself. He would never make his delivery if he did not first find his ship.

“Right, right.” The sailor touched his forehead and shut his eyes, pantomiming a diviner receiving a vision. “The sea spirits are calling. They tell me... They tell me you’re headed to Avignary.”

Marco crossed his arms. “Lucky guess.”

“Turbo doesn’t guess, lad.”

"So answer me this: where are the ships headed for Avignary?”

Turbo gnawed his reed. “That answer’s hidden in an old tale of the sea.” He cleared his throat. “The ship you seek flies a pennant blue as the sky on a summer day, red like the blood in your countrymen’s veins, and gold like, a... eh... Sorry, lad. I never was too good at rhyming sea tales. Rhythmic pentameter’ll be the death me, if I knew what that was.”

“What does this have anything to do with my getting to Avignary?” asked Marco.

“Rules of the sea, my boy. An old salt like me has to answer every nautical question by spinning a tale of the sea on the fly. And they don’t have to be true.” Turbo heldup an index finger to make his point. “But they have to rhyme. That’s the important part.”

"You’re senile,” Marco said.

“Aye, there’s a touch of madness in this here skull, methinks. Old injury. Musket ball to the noggin. But I tell you no lies. Avignarian ships fly blue, red, and gold pennants.” He pointed across the pier. “Head back the way you came to the branch and go two over.”

“Thank you,” Marco said before trudging away in a hurry.

Taking the old sailor’s advice, Marco backtracked up the pier and followed the boardwalk to a distant wing of the seaport. The ships anchored at this end of the harbor dwarfed even the freighters he had seen earlier. These giant barges floated so high on the surface of the ocean that the boardwalk between them seemed like a path through a valley. Each of them flew Avignarian colors.

He slowed his pace to look at the ships more closely. These had square windows carved into their sides, some ships having one, others two rows running along their middles. He stopped in place, stunned, when he noticed that the ship before him cut away. The rear quarter of the ship’s side had been shorn off.

Sunlight glinted off of a dull metal tube sticking out of a stack of splintered wood. Marco cupped his eyes to peer inside, and realized that the metal was the lip of a cannon cast in black iron.

Marco was so engrossed with the warship that he wasn’t looking where he was going. He walked into the outstretched hands of a man standing in his path.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Marco said out of reflex.

“No harm,” said the man. He brushed the ruffles out of his red suede coat and adjusted his hat. After a beat, he added, “Admonisher caught your eye. It was to be expected. She is a remarkable ship, after all.”

He doffed his hat with a bow. “I am Alexis Mordail, corsair extraordinaire.”

Alexis’s overcoat drew back as he straightened from the bow, giving Marco a glimpse of the ivory-gripped derringer holstered at his waistband.

“Look,” Marco said, “I’m sorry to cut you off, but I’m lost and pressed for time. I’m looking for an Avignarian ship.”

“You’re in the right place,” said Alexis. “All of these are Avignarian.”

“Yes, I know, but I’m looking for one in particular. I’m on business, you see, and I can’t be held up any longer.”

“Ah.” Alexis gave a thoughtful nod. “Forgive me for not recognizing you earlier, sir. We’ve been expecting you.”

“It’s of utmost importance that I... wait, what?” Marco asked. He’d kept speaking over Alexis without listening to what the man said. “You’ve been waiting for me?”

“Of course.”

Marco’s shoulders bowed in a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank Kandensa.”

“Here, let me take that for you,” Alexis said, snatching up Marco’s backpack like a dutiful valet. “Follow me, please.”

Alexis led him past the warships, where a much smaller vessel awaited at the end of the pier. “This is Stormwind,” said Alexis as he led Marco up the boarding ramp. “She’s on loan to me for this special assignment.”

“What special assignment?”

Alexis stopped in place halfway up the ramp. “Why, you, sir.” He resumed walking. “She’s by far one of the finest caravels on the open sea,” Alexis went on, absently running the pads of his fingers along the ship’s rail as he stepped aboard. “I’ve a mind to own a vessel just like this – as a pleasure boat, of course – before I get old and relegated to telling rhyming nautical tales to random passersby.”

Marco’s brow knit. Sailors were strange people indeed.

Alexis put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Men poured out from the stairs leading below deck and assembled before him. Each of them stood shoulder to shoulder rigidly at attention, eyes trained at the horizon, arms at their sides, exemplifying the chiseled discipline that comes only through effective leadership.

“Mister Monkeygrip,” Alexis called out.

“Coming, sir!”

None of the men standing at attention had spoken. Then, suddenly, a tall youth with spindly limbs shimmied down from the mainmast, leaping between the rigging ropes like an ape. He dropped to the deck and tumbled with the fall, coming to his feet in mid-roll.

“Present and accounted for,” Monkeygrip gibbered. He snapped erect long enough to give a firm salute, then dropped to all fours with a crooked grin.

Alexis shoved the travel bag into Monkeygrip’s arms. “Take the gentleman’s personal effects to his quarters.”

Monkeygrip pressed the backpack to his chest with one arm and scampered through a door at the ship’s rear, jabbering all the way.

Alexis turned to face his crew. “Mister Kerrigan, if you please.”

A bald crewman with a face like creased leather hobbled forward. His tiny eyes were sunken deep behind his craggy brow, looking like two black raisins floating on the surface of a bowl of burnt oatmeal. Grease and sweat stains pocked his shirt, which frayed away at the sleeves, revealing giant bronze forearms. He slumped against a gnarled wooden crutch tucked under his armpit.

“Prepare for departure, Mister Kerrigan,” said Alexis with arms akimbo.

“Aye,” he shouted back. He faced his mates. “You heard the man. Get this barge moving.”

All at once, the crewmen scattered to their respective duties.

Monkeygrip skittered out from the rear of the ship and let out the sails. Three enormous men wrestled with a hoist to draw up the anchor. Kerrigan took his post on the bridge, overseeing the activity on deck with the tiniest motions of his even tinier eyes. In the midst of the uproar, Marco turned in place to watch as the men around him worked with mechanical precision. It was extraordinary.

Alexis squeezed Marco’s arm gently, catching his attention.

“Please sir, follow me,” he said, sweeping his other hand out before him. They cut through the commotion on the deck, headed for the stateroom at the ship’s rear. Alexis was first to reach the door and he held it open for Marco.

“I trust you will be comfortable,” Alexis said.

The quarters were sumptuously furnished. A fine writing desk stained glossy black sat at the end of the room, accompanied by a plush chair tucked under it. A globe of the world cast in bronze stood within arm’s reach of the desk. In the opposite corner, a wardrobe sat on brass lion’s paws. A massive four-post bed occupied half of the room. Just by the look of it, Marco presumed that he could lie down at the bed’s center and stretch out, and yet still not reach its corners.

“This is magnificent,” said Marco as he stepped inside.

“I’m pleased you think so. These are my quarters. I’m rather particular about my furnishings, you see.”

Marco blinked. “So where will you be staying?”

“I must oversee the repairs to Admonisher. Kerrigan will serve as acting captain in my absence.” He pinched the brim of his hat between his thumb and forefinger and tipped it down briefly. “Safe journey, sir.”

“Goodbye,” said Marco as Alexis left.

Marco rounded the desk and sat in the chair. The globe beckoned for his attention, just asking to be spun dizzily.

Monkeygrip had left his backpack on the desktop. Marco undid the buckles and peered inside it to make sure nothing had been removed. Tasked with such important business as he was, he could not be too careful. The parcel was still inside and padlocked. The letter strapped to it bore an unbroken wax seal. Neither showed signs of tampering.

He looked up with a start as Kerrigan appeared at the doorframe.

“We’ll be leaving shortly, sir,” Kerrigan said. “Captain Mordail asked me to tell you.” He glanced over his shoulder and back again, his eyes merely a dull glimmer beneath the shelf that was his forehead. “Also, there’s someone here to see you, sir. I’ll be leaving you to your business.”

Marco rocked forward in his chair as his visitor came in.

A dragon. Never before had he seen one in person. If it was scaled, walked on two legs, and talked, then it was a dragon by Marco’s reckoning. That, or an exceptionally well-trained iguana.

Smallish in height, the dragon seemed smaller still with a giant like Kerrigan beside him. He had the look of a human bureaucrat, dressed in a black straight tie and crisp white shirt tucked neatly into his pinstripe slacks. Navy blue scales covered his body, from the tips of the frilly crest atop his head to his clawed feet. His tail ended in a broad spade that hovered above the floor but never touched it.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” the dragon said with a bow.

A pair of enormous folded wings jutted out from where his shirt had been tailored to accommodate them. “I am Kuril Krenarin,” the dragon went on, “of Emperor Rao Ordan’s Bureau of Foreign Affairs. On behalf of our country, we are most pleased to have you as our guest.”

There was no mirth in Kuril’s words. He smiled out of cordiality alone. Marco fought hard not to wince as there were many pointy teeth in that mouth.

“I trust you have your letter, sir?” said Kuril.

“Oh,” Marco sputtered, prying his eyes from the dragon’s fangs. “Yes, of course.”

He reached into his bag and handed Kuril the envelope.

Kuril glanced down at it but did not take it. Instead, he waggled his talons in a render unto me flourish.

“Your letter of introduction, please?” Kuril insisted.

“I didn’t think I’d need one,” Marco said.

“Well, perhaps a person such as yourself needs no introduction. But a letter of introduction would be helpful to identify you, sir.”

Marco’s brow furrowed. “Why is everyone calling me ‘sir’ all of a sudden?”

“Shall I call you something else, sir? Lordship, perhaps? Ambassador?”

“Ambassador?”

“Do you prefer that one?”

Marco swallowed hard. “Why would I?”

Kuril’s eyes narrowed. “Well, sir, that is who you are, isn’t it?”

Marco's (mis)adventures have only just begun! Want to see what happens next? Click here to continue reading.

Still want more? Check out The Gullwing Odyssey in our bookstore.

Let's face it -- adventuring is not the safest of professions. Even the best of adventurers get hurt. And if the length of their injury list is any measure, the characters of The Gullwing Odyssey are by far not the best of adventurers.

While an exhaustive list would be tedious, here we've posted some of their more interesting -- as in genuinely awful or humorous -- personal injuries.

These come courtesy of Dr. Desmoulin Jonas's medical clinic -- "handy enough with a scalpel to be your surgeon, barber, and tailor!"

Broken nose -- killer hummingbird
Facial bruising -- leapt through a pub window
Severe chest contusion  -- wild animal attack
Cracked ribs -- wild animal attack
Abdominal impalement -- airship crash-landing
Blunt trauma to side of head -- struck with flat of a sword

Severe nervous trauma -- extreme verbal abuse
Crumpled snout -- bashed with a shield
Bruised talons -- punched an assailant
Full-body first degree burns -- magic spell
Electrocution -- magic spell

Facial laceration -- wild animal attack
Internal hemorrhaging -- walking into a hail of bullets
Broken ribs -- point-blank gunshot wound
Facial contusions -- group beating

Flesh wound -- glancing pistol shot
Mild abdominal contusion -- kicked by a man on a horse

Three teeth knocked out -- biting an assailant
Facial contusions -- group beating
Black eye -- group beating
Life-threatening abdominal laceration -- dueling injury
Bruised ribs -- magic spell
Fractured clavicle -- gunshot wound

Abdominal impalement -- crossbow bolt
Assorted bumps and bruises -- crashing his airship into a warship below
Head trauma -- musket butt to the back of the head
Blunt facial trauma -- group beating
Two teeth knocked out -- severe beating

Want to see just what sort of trouble this motley group of misfits get into (and out of)? Check out The Gullwing Odyssey. It's a fantasy/comedy adventure of epic proportions, and not your typical swords and sorcery novel. Expect spectacular magic. Expect plenty of laughs. But above all, expect the unexpected.

Click the book cover image for more information.

Want to read some sample chapters? Sample the first three chapters for free.

Cyan Wraithwate’s campaign in the Elashi Southlands had come to a standstill. He was loath to admit it, even to himself, but he was terrified.

The battle fought a week from yesterday brought him closer to death than ever before. A chance arrow struck him dead-center in the chest, punching clear through his breastplate, knocking him off his horse. He awoke hours later in his tent, his wounded chest swollen and warm, in frightening contrast to how clammy he felt.

He sat cross-legged in his tent, elbows propped on his thighs, face in his hands. He hadn’t left his tent in days.

A rustle at the tent’s entrance drew his attention.

“This had better be important,” Cyan spoke into his hands.

“Good evening, Captain Cyan,” said his visitor.

He did not recognize this man’s voice. Cyan raised his head.

Standing by the tent flap was a lanky wisp of a man enveloped in yellow robes. Every inch of him was draped in yellow fabric except for his clean-shaven head.

Cyan frowned. No doubt this man was a wizard. Cyan had never met a wizard he liked, much less would trust with anything more important than latrine duty.

“Why are you here?” Cyan asked.

The man paced inside with an imperious air. “General Godfrey sent me. He is disappointed over the news that his shining young protégé has lost impetus.”

“If all he sent you out here to do is recite the obvious, then you can save your breath and leave.”

The man drilled into Cyan with his steel blue eyes. “I am known as Wren. And I did not come solely to discuss the obvious.”

Wren reached over his shoulder and slung off a small shoulder pack. He withdrew a forearm bracer polished to a high gleam. Two serpents were embossed into the metal. One coiled into a horizontal figure-eight pattern and the other did likewise, but vertically, bisecting the first.

Cyan’s eyes flitted down at the armor and back up to meet Wren’s. “Apparently, you got your facts wrong,” he shouted, yanking his shirt open to reveal the bandages on his chest.

“You jump to conclusions,” said Wren. “Wear this, and you need not don any more armor.”

“You’re a closeted academic.”

“Is it that you are afraid?”

“You’re wasting my time.”

“See that I’m right,” Wren spoke over him. “Try it on.”

Cyan held his tongue, but shot Wren such a look of derision as would make a nun faint. Grudgingly, he obliged. The bracer fit as though it was made just for him; the leather straps did not even need adjusting to fasten the armor to his forearm.

“And now?” Cyan asked.

“Now we do a test,” said Wren, an instant before snatching a dagger from beneath the folds of his robe. Cyan roared with surprise as Wren’s knife flashed before him. A chill entered his body through his neck.

Cyan fell, cupping his wound with his hands. Blood surged between his fingers. Everything went gray, then black.

* * *

Cyan awoke with a start and kicked off the ground, springing to his feet and hollering all the while. Wren pointed his fingers and launched a smoldering ray of fire at Cyan that exploded at his chest. The burst knocked Cyan head over heels, landing him onto his back with the wind knocked out of him.

It hurt too much to move. Cyan’s body let up wisps smoke.

“I am going to kill you for that,” he wheezed.

“For what?” Wren asked, arrogant as ever.

“For…” Cyan trailed off.

“For killing you?” Wren suggested.

“Yes.”

“But did I really kill you?”

“No,” Cyan stammered. “No, I suppose not.”

Damn Wren for being right, he spoke the truth. Cyan touched his injured neck and found that the flesh there was intact. Even his puncture wound in his chest was gone.

“Now you see the power of the bracer,” said the mage. “Each time you are laid low, it will bring you back and grant you monstrous strength. But there is a catch.”

“Isn’t there always?”

“You must not take the bracer off,” Wren said with emphasis.

Groaning, Cyan brought himself to sit up. “Is that all?”

Wren nodded.

“Good. Get out of my sight.”

Daybreak saw Cyan astride his horse at the head of his army. His troops fell into position around the palisade wall of an Elashi hamlet. This would be a difficult siege. The week-long hiatus he had given the defenders plenty of time to make preparations.

He called out to the people behind the walls, “Open your gates and surrender, and we shall be lenient with you. Refuse, and we will burn you out of your homes.”

The Elashi men on the palisade catwalks held up both hands with middle fingers held high. Cyan was unfamiliar with Elashi culture but knew enough to recognize this for a rude gesture.

He gritted his teeth. “You brought this upon yourselves!”

Raising his battle-ax, Cyan gave the signal for the battering ram to advance. His army gave way to a crew of engineers pushing a wheeled ram. The engineers butted the device up against the palisade gates, then rocked the ram’s head back on its fulcrum to send it careening into the fortifications.

The ram stuck the gate with a deafening crack of splintered wood.

Coarse yells went up just as the ram smashed the gate. Cyan’s horse reared as Elashi ambushers surged from out of hiding behind the palisade’s blind spots. The ambushers fell upon the siege engineers’ flanks like a wave at sea, utterly cutting the hapless men down.

Suddenly the sky darkened as though by a swift moving cloud. Cyan looked up, for a moment taking his eyes off the action, and saw that iron barbs rained down upon them.

He had led his men into a trap.

Cyan tugged on the reins and his mount threw him to the dirt. His shoulder gave a sharp pop on hitting the ground. Wincing, he dragged himself along one-handed, fleeing from the defenders’ charge. His horse gave a panicked scream as the hail of falling arrows tore into its flesh. It reared again and toppled over onto Cyan, crushing him under its weight.

* * *

He awoke in a panic. Facedown and gasping for breath, he spun onto his backside and sat up.

The sun was half set. The battle was over. The bodies of an entire Elashi legion were fanned out in a circle around him, with him at the center.

Cyan stood. The palisade was leveled. Beyond it, waning daylight shone through black billows of smoke as the Elashi settlement burned.

“By Nordon,” he whispered. Had he done this? He wasn’t sure. He held up his forearm for a better look at his enchanted bracer, turned it one way then the other for any clues it might hold.

This was too much. Wren had gone too far. Cyan’s orders were to subdue the Elashis, not to decimate them. It might be years before the Elashis would be in any shape to offer up regular tribute. This would get Cyan court-martialed for sure.

He tugged at the bracer’s leather straps. As he undid the first band the bracer began to grow warm.

“What the…?” he muttered, then broke into a scream. The bracer glowed with searing heat like a blacksmith’s forge. Smoke rose from his burning flesh. Cyan clasped the bracer with his other hand to yank it free but scalded himself and tore his hand away.

As abruptly as it began, the burning sensation stopped. The bracer had become a sooty black color. The leather straps that fastened it to his arm were gone. It had become a solid metal tube fused to his skin.

The world spun. Cyan clutched at his temples. His vision rippled as though running water fell before his eyes. When finally his senses settled down, he realized he was no longer in his tent. Cyan stood in a cavernous library. Books were stacked in shelves that ran floor to ceiling as far as he could see.

He was not alone.

“You tried to take the bracer off, didn’t you?” said Wren in a matter-of-fact tone.

Cyan spun to face him. “You!” he bellowed. “You tricked me!”

“Did I?’ Wren asked. “I gave fair warning against taking it off.”

“You didn’t say this would happen.”

“I felt I didn’t need to.”

Cyan glowered at him.

“Was I not perfectly clear?” Wren went on.

“Then how did you expect me to take it off once I was through with it?” Cyan asked.

“It would have been simple, if you had come to me first.”

Touché, Cyan thought. “What do you mean would have been?”

Wren frowned at having to state the obvious. “I mean, it’s now going to be a lot harder to take it off.”

“So do it,” said Cyan.

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” he shot back.

“It’s too late for me to do that now.”

Cyan reached between his shoulder blades and drew his ax. “I don’t have patience for your word games, wizard. So you’d better start making sense before I cut it out of you.”

“You don’t understand the powers at work here,” Wren explained. “That one bracer has more power infused in it than any living creature can ever imagine. With it on you can be like a god, undying and eternal. But to safeguard against someone taking this power from its wearer, it bonds itself to the flesh of the user when someone attempts to remove it.”

Cyan eased his stance, lowered his ax slightly. “So I’m a god now, am I?”

“You are immortal,” said Wren.

“For how long?”

“For as long as you are alive.”

“That’s forever, right?”

“So long as you wear the bracer.”

“What if it comes off?”

“It won’t.”

“So then I’m a god?”

“Maybe.”

“Answer my questions!”

“I thought I had,” Wren drawled. He clasped his hands at his chest. “You will forgive me, as I am very busy. There is other work I must attend to. Should you need further assistance, merely call my name.”

Wren extended a hand and a small white card popped into being between his fingers. Cyan took it and glanced it over. Printed on the card was the mage’s name and occupation – Wren, Owl Mage.

“So now what…” Cyan began, and cut off. He was back on the outskirts of the Elashi village. Wren and his library were nowhere to be seen.

“Hmph. Wizards. Always here one minute and gone the next.”

Cyan yawned. It was late and the moon was high. Such a thing for a god to require sleep, he thought. He trudged into the village and spent the night in a burnt-out shell of a house.

He slept a scant few hours before the sky burned rosy orange from the rising sun. His pupils stung in the morning light. Cyan rolled over and faced the wall. Today he had no reason to wake up early. His campaign was over and so was his career – not that a god needed such things.

It was not too long after that Cyan finally roused. His parched throat yearned for water. He felt like he hadn’t had a drink in weeks.

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with the heels of his palms and stopped in mid-motion. The touch of cold iron against both sides of his face prickled his skin. Eyes still cupped, he blinked, then slowly drew his hands away from his face.

Both arms were covered in iron up to his elbows.

Cyan shook his head. He held up his left arm for a closer look at the bracer. On this arm was the one Wren had given him, he was sure of it – it was embossed with coiled snakes. The bracer on his other arm wasn’t there yesterday. He held it up, searched for buckles and found none.

“H-how?” he stammered. Cyan clasped his mouth with one hand, staggered backward and fell on his backside. Raspy little breaths wheezed through his fingers. He rapped on new bracer with his opposite fist. It sounded hollow.

“How can this be?” He held his arm out and turned it around. His right arm from his elbow to his fingertips was encased in iron.

He felt the need to scream. At that instant, Cyan cocked his head back, clenched his eyes shut yelled Wren’s name.

When he opened his eyes he was in a dark, stuffy laboratory. Fumes rose from cauldrons and open beakers, making the atmosphere heavy. Wren sat at his desk, looking more amused than surprised. His workspace was cluttered with notes and papers stacked messily atop it and peeking out from its overfilled drawers.

“I take it that you are having some kind of trouble?” Wren asked.

“Oh not at all,” Cyan said with a sarcastic grin, “unless you call my skin turning to lifeless metal trouble!” He held up both arms. “Look!”

“Such is the price of immortality. Did you think it would come without a cost?”

“This is not what I signed up for.”

Wren spread his arms. “What is more timeless than iron? Iron does not die. And with proper care, iron never corrodes. Look at all the statues of war heroes – they’re all made of iron for a reason. And now you can be just like them.”

A fine sweat broke on Cyan’s brow. He was not sure whether Wren had meant Cyan would end up like the war heroes or their statues.

“I don’t want this,” said Cyan. “I want my body back.”

Wren steepled his fingers. “I’m sorry.”

“What do…”

“I said I’m sorry,” Wren spoke over him.

“That’s not good enough!” Cyan shouted.

Wren’s eyebrows dipped sharply at the inner corners. “It is not possible to reverse the effects of the bracer now,” he said flatly.

“There has to be a way.”

“There isn’t. No mortal has the power to undo the magic that binds the bracer to you…”

Cyan grit his teeth. “Then who does?”

Wren’s mouth pressed into a tight line.

“Damn it, you know something I don’t, don’t you?” Cyan yelled. He reached across the desk and grabbed Wren by the collar, dragged him across the desktop.

“Tell me what I need to know!” Cyan shouted into Wren’s face.

“Cyan…”

“What?!” He shook the mage to rattle the answer out of him.

“There…” Wren stammered. “There exist four sage dragons.”

“Quit with the fairy tales, wizard. Dragons don’t exist.”

“They do exist!” Wren clutched Cyan’s wrists in his hands. Much as he struggled, he could not wrest free of Cyan’s grip.

Cyan cocked back a fist.

“I’m telling the truth!” said Wren.

Cyan drilled his eyes into the wizard’s quivering face. If Wren spoke any lies, he would have detected them out by now. “Keep talking, wizard.”

Wren’s eyes flitted between Cyan’s and his fist. “Four sage dragons guard the treasures of the elements – earth, wind, water, and fire. With their powers you can undo the binding force of the bracer, maybe even revert your metal body back to flesh.”

“How do I find them?”

“Put me down first.”

“How do I find them?” Cyan repeated, shaking the mage with each word.

“I will give you a charm…”

“Oh no,” he cut him short. “Not that again. I’m through with magic.”

“No, no, it’s harmless, really! Trust me!” Wren pleaded.

“Unless I try to take it off, right? Then what’ll happen? For all I know you could be giving me something that will phase me out of existence for good.”

“No, this charm is completely safe, I promise. Now please, put me down so I can get it for you.”

Cyan paused a beat, then shoved Wren back across the desk. Wren rolled of the workspace and onto the floor. The wizard got to his feet and dusted himself off.

“Right… well…” Wren trailed off.

Cyan gave a slow deliberate nod. Even without words, the message was clear: “Get on with it.”

Wren went to his cluttered chest of drawers and dug through them, spilling papers onto the floor. “I found it,” he said, holding up a crude necklace. It was nothing more than a loop of jade suspended from a cord.

“Put this around your neck,” Wren said, handing it to him. “It’s a wind charm. It will take you wherever you want to go instantly.”

Cyan opened his mouth to speak.

“And no, nothing will happen to you if you try to take it off,” Wren preempted him.

It was with no slight trepidation that Cyan slung the necklace on. To his relief, the wizard had told the full truth this time. Nothing utterly detrimental had stricken him. Yet.

“What do I do once I’ve talked to the dragons?” Cyan asked.

“You need for them to lend you their treasures, each representative of the elements they stand for.”

“I need one treasure from any one of them?”

“No.” Wren hesitated. “All of them.”

Cyan scowled.

“They will test you,” Wren went on, “to see if you are worthy of their gifts. Once you have all four you must return here, and using their combined powers I might just be able to free you from the bracer.”

Arms crossed, Cyan could not believe what he was hearing. Dragons did not exist – they never did. They were beasts slain by knights in fairy tales. He shook his head. Almost as unbelievable was that, for a moment, Cyan actually thought Wren was telling the truth.

He gave a sigh. “What do these treasures look like?”

“No one knows,” said Wren. “No one has ever seen them.

Cyan nodded. “So now what?”

Wren froze in the middle of straightening the creases in his robe. “Tell the wind charm where you want to go.”

It occurred to Cyan that he didn’t know where any of the dragons were.

“You’re overthinking this,” Wren said. “Just tell it you want to go to the abode of the earth dragon.”

“Why should I go there first?”

Wren threw up his arms in exasperation. “Stop making this difficult. Just go.”

Cyan snatched up the charm and gripped it in his fist. “If this thing drops me into a fiery volcano, I’m going to claw my way out and come after you personally.”

It was faint, but Cyan saw Wren’s throat bob as the wizard swallowed hard.

 The charm glowed bright green in Cyan’s hand. Wren’s papers rustled as a gust of wind kicked up, swirled into a vortex that began to whirl around Cyan. The world beyond the rush of air stretched into streaks of color.

“A final word of caution…” Wren shouted over the noise. “Try not to die too many times.”

“Or else what?” Cyan yelled back.

“I'm not sure,” said Wren.

That very second there was a bright flash of green and the next thing he knew he was falling to the ground face first.

This excerpt is from R. Perez de Pereda's upcoming novel, The Many Deaths of Cyan Wraithwate. It's a sword and sorcery fantasy with an ironic twist published by Darkwater Syndicate. The novel is available in all ebook formats, as well as in paperback from our bookstore.

Born in Cuba in 1941, Ramiro Perez de Pereda has seen it all. After fighting communist insurgents at home, in 1959 he left Cuba for the United States where he made a name for himself working with blue-chip corporations. He has since retired from the business world and now devotes himself to his family and his writing.

Ramiro, who writes under the name R. Perez de Pereda, is the author of several dozen short stories and poems. A lifelong fan of fantasy in all its forms, in his youth he was a big fan of Robert E. Howard's work, particularly the Conan the Barbarian series.

Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi (750-850 CE) was a Persian scholar in the House of Wisdom, Baghdad. He was an extraordinary scientist, astronomer and mathematician, who introduced the concept of decimals and is considered the Father of Algebra. The European Latin translation of his name evolved into the term, "algorithm," which in modern day parlance is equivalent to a computer program—a set of instructions carried out by a machine for a definite purpose.

Prologue

Adam lifted the Louisville Slugger to his shoulder and awaited the next pitch, oblivious to the subtle chain of events about to unfold this warm summer afternoon in nineteen seventy-nine … events that were fated to tear apart the core foundations of civilization itself.

"I'm ready when you are."

The pronouncement stilled the mocking banter of his older teammates. His grip tightened about the partially unraveled friction tape wound about the handle. Tossing back a shock of dirty blond hair, he sucked in his breath and eased his body back in eager expectation.

After a pickup game several of Adam's buddies were hanging out, tossing the ball around and kicking up the usual bragging and ragging ritual. Despite being only thirteen, and perhaps because of it, Adam found himself declaring with no uncertainty to his teammates not only could he hit a ball out of the park, but it would soar over the trees edging left field, continue over the new twelve foot cyclone fence, and make it over the three-story row houses facing the park. This boast immediately caught everyone's attention, and that's how he ended up with the bat. 

"Here it comes ya lil' squirt," bellowed the pitcher as he wound up.

The ball flew straight, down the middle, and when Adam struck it, the crack echoed off the dense wall of trees surrounding the field. Heads turned to watch it fly toward the treetops. It was as if a film projector slowed down, moving ahead frame by frame, the camera zooming in as the ball scaled the huge chestnut trees and climbed still farther to clear the cyclone fence. For a moment the ball looked like it would continue on into legend. However, the laws of physics, in particular those describing the unyielding effects of gravity, began to take over. The flight path arced downward, descending to the street.

Elation shifted to terror. Adam stared in horror at the cars trundling through the landing zone. To his relief, a resounding 'thunk' announced the ball's contact with the street surface, however the respite was short-lived, for the next sound was that of glass breaking, and it came from a house near his own. Self-preservation kicked in.

All on the field scattered in every direction but toward the ball's unfortunate crash site.

The pitcher ran to Adam and yanked the bat out of his hands. He slowed long enough to ask, "Wattaya standin' there for?" and then took off toward the nearest park entrance.

Adam remained rooted to the ground as he watched his teammates get swallowed by the surrounding city streets. Fighting a growing sense of panic, he jogged and then slowed to a walk when he reached a side entrance. He headed out to the fateful meeting of ball with window.

I just bought that ball.

At the corner he glanced both ways—no eye witnesses ready to point the finger and slap the blame. Nothing stirred.

He approached the ball's last known whereabouts and began a systematic check of both his house and next door for the telltale signs of a victimized window—perhaps a large gaping hole framed by jagged shards of glass, perhaps a curtain swaying out of the hole, perhaps even screams of outrage from within. He gave his own house a quick inspection to verify its windows were still intact, and then there was the chief suspect—the house next door. His first pass failed to bring up anything out of place.

He stood for a moment in front of his neighbor's house and stared at the first floor, eyeing each window.

Maybe the ball never hit a window.

And then he saw it. To the left of the wooden stairs leading to the first floor entrance, it was the basement window, or where the basement window should have been. A few daggers of glass remained in the opening, framing the darkness within like the gaping mouth of a sharp-toothed ogre. Adam continued his stroll past the gruesome specter. If indeed the incident went unnoticed, he might be able to retrieve the ball. Like his own house, access to the basement took the form of an inside entry next to the backdoor. He reached it in seconds, pulled at the handle. It creaked open to reveal a wooden stairway descending into darkness. He inched his way down, careful to step to the side of each tread to avoid the squeal of loose boards.

At the bottom of the stairs he peered down the length of the basement toward the front of the house. A grim darkness surrounded him. The light from the stairs faded as Adam crept forward, groping for a switch or a dangling chain. Bumping into musty carton boxes and storage crates, he crept farther on into the gloom. He heard footsteps above, muffled conversation, and the sound of water gurgling through pipes. His stretched out hands touched a metal post. He craned his head to the side and focused on a dim light ahead … the broken window. Below it and to the side, hazy light streamed in from above and outlined a darkly smeared coal bin. Most buildings along his street had been converted to oil heat before he was born. Some sported the vestiges of a former era. He scanned the foot of the window but could not find he ball. When he neared the coal bin, he needed to look no further. The ball sat atop a mound of the dusty anthracite.

He scaled the blackened wooden planks and landed softly at the base of the coal pile. The mound gave way with each step. He clambered up, slipping and kicking up sulfurous dust, blackening hands and knees as he scrambled to the top. He lunged for the ball, grasped it with one hand, and glided down the rocky heap in deep satisfaction. Dust settled around and on him, fading in and out of the light. Adam found his other hand clutching a few nuggets. He was about to toss them back into the heap when a sparkle of reflected light caught his eye. He opened his fingers, releasing one black lump at a time, until all that remained was a fist-sized chunk. Even in the muted light he saw the oddly-shaped golden glimmer. He rotated his upturned palm, bringing it closer. There was something metallic embedded in the coal.

The sound of footfalls on the staircase broke his reverie. There he was, reclining in a dusty coal bin at the far end of an unlit, unfamiliar and cavernous cellar—ball in one hand and a mystery lump of coal in the other. The vaguely silhouetted figure reaching the foot of the stairs was about to discover an intruder. Tucking away the coal in his dungarees pocket, he rolled off the brimstone mound, careful to avoid dislodging a 'here-I-am' mini-avalanche. He slipped over the side of the bin and then felt around for some potential cover. The lights came on just as he squeezed between a stack of cartons and the damp wall. Shuffling feet with loose slippers dragged themselves along the cement floor, slapping their way toward him. As they approached, Adam fought down a strong urge to jump up and run. He was sure that he was not entirely hidden from view.

I bet my ass is hanging out for all to see.

The shuffling and slapping drew to a stop.

That's it, he's got me.

"What's this?"

I'm dead.

Adam recognized the voice of his neighbor, Mr. Kurtinaitis—a gravelly, ancient and grinding timbre, which even with such a short phrase, retained its distinct Lithuanian origins. Every neighborhood had its curmudgeon, some old geezer that never got along with anyone younger than thirty, the community warlock whispered about by the children unfortunate enough to have encountered him. Definitely to be avoided at all costs. Mr. Kurtinaitis fit the description, having the required indeterminate advanced age, the bent-over posture, gnarly limbs, the grizzled, unkempt look, an obscure foreign accent and gruff demeanor required for a fully-fledged wizard of the dark world. He was staring at the broken window of his beloved, dreary cellar domain. Adam imagined a deeply furrowed brow framed the evil eye searching him out, maybe already locked in on his exposed posterior. He was about to stand and beg for mercy, when after a few more shuffling sounds, Mr. Kurtinaitis muttered, "Damned kids."

More silence.

He's seen me for sure. He's probably sneaking up on me now.

Instead of getting hoisted by the scruff of his neck, Adam heard a deep and profound sigh of disgust, a kind of snort a dragon might issue, and the shuffling sounds slowly headed away to the back stairs.

Fighting an overwhelming urge to sigh out loud, Adam concluded he would not be turned into a toad today. The Dark Lord proceeded to shut off the lights and uttered several nasty sounding phrases in the Lord's native tongue. Adam heard him ascend the stairs, grumbling at each step, and slam a door. A full five minutes of complete silence went by before he extracted his prostrate form from behind the boxes and quietly made his way out through the same door, all the while certain that Mr. Kurtinaitis was actually hiding just out of sight at the entrance.

He slinked outside, tip-toeing along the back wall of the building, holding his breath lest it give away his position. After reaching the security of his own backyard next door, he parked himself on the wooden stairs and waited for his adrenaline levels to subside along with the thumping in his chest. When he resumed normal breathing, he placed the ball in the recess of his backdoor entry, and with a satisfied exhale, reached into his pocket.

As he held the lump of coal to the waning afternoon sunlight, he beheld an odd metallic gleam, appearing as a golden slash in the side of the black rock.

Maybe it's gold!

Eager to crack it open, he struck the coal against the slate walk at the base of the stairs a few times, which only resulted in leaving a few black scars along the slate's surface. He was about to try and crush the lump beneath his feet when he heard his parents returning from shopping, parking their car in front of the house. He grabbed up the chunk, put it back into his pocket and entered through the backdoor to greet his mom who was carrying groceries.

"Hey, mom. Need some help?"

"Dad'll need a hand. There's more in the car. How on Earth did you get so filthy?"

"Aw, nothin'… I just fell."

Her eyebrows rose and her head bent downward, giving her the glaring look with which he was all too familiar.

"Help your dad with the bags from the car, get those clothes off, and take a bath. You do remember we have an appointment to see Dr. Wujciak this afternoon? Hurry up, you have fifteen minutes."

"OK, mom," Adam replied.

He had forgotten about the physical.

Damn.

Summer was nearly over and St. Harold's Preparatory School required a physical for all new students. Adam was thrilled about the prospect of starting a whole new phase of his life. As he thought about the doctor's office and his mystery rock, an idea emerged which got him even more excited.

Adam sat in Dr. Wujciak's crowded waiting room with his mother at his side. Although they had arrived on time for the appointment, he was certain there were at least a hundred people ahead of them. After he read and re-read the same worn out, three month old issue of Life magazine, Adam's name was called. He leaped up to follow the nurse, giving his mom a quick wave. He was finally old enough to undergo a physical on his own.

After the usual weight, height and blood pressure routine, the nurse left him in a small inner office to await the good doctor's arrival. Adam unconsciously checked for the lump in his pocket. He wandered over to the corner of the office and stared at a dusty old instrument that he knew from previous discussions with Dr. Wujciak was a fluoroscope.

An x-ray machine.

It looked like a vertical washboard with some dials and switches at its base and would allow the user to see through objects using x-rays. He was staring at it when the doctor came in.

Dr. Wujciak went through his standard prodding and jabbing routine, interrupting with an occasional request to say, "aah" or to breathe deeply as he moved an icy cold stethoscope along his bare back. In the end, everything was in order, and Adam received the usual congratulations for being so healthy and growing so quickly. Dr. Wujciak was about to escort him out to the reception area, when Adam stopped, pointed and asked, "Is that thing back there still working?"

Dr. Wujciak hesitated a moment and then answered, "You mean Old Flora? We don't use it anymore, Adam, because it generates too high a level of x-ray radiation to be safe."

"Oh, it's not for me. I was wondering if it, Old Flora, still works, 'cause I have something that I was hoping you could check out."

Adam took out a little ball of tissue paper, unrolled it, and held out the chunk of coal. Dr. Wujciak brought it up in his hand and flipped it over several times. He stopped when his eyes caught the metallic gleam, a sparkling golden band embedded in the black rock.

"Aha … So you want to see what's in this coal? Why don't you just break it open?"

"I plan to do that, but maybe it's something that might break. It's gotta be really old, being in coal. Do you think that Old Flora can see inside it?" he asked with a broad grin.

Dr. Wujciak looked as intrigued as Adam. "I haven’t fired up Old Flora for years, but there should be no problem spending an extra minute or two in trying her out. Besides, it is a very curious piece of coal."

He rolled the stately antique out of the corner, plugged in the frayed wiring and dimmed the lights in the office. "I've been thinking about donating it to a museum."

He riffled through one of his desk drawers, and handed a pair of red-lensed spectacles to Adam, while donning a pair himself.

"We'll need the glasses to see the image. Newer models have more sensitive fluors. They produce brighter images."

A faint buzzing sound followed the flicking of a few switches and the washboard began to emit an eerie glow. Dr. Wujciak made a few more adjustments to the machine and asked, "So where did you find it?"

"In the park," Adam lied without hesitation.

Dr. Wujciak pulled his red spectacles down to the tip of his nose, propped up the lump of coal on a stand behind the washboard and said, "Come over to this side, Adam, so that we both might see what's inside."

"By the way, where'd you get the name Old Flora?" asked Adam.

"Just a nickname. I've had this baby around for most of my professional career. They used to be very popular back in the forties and fifties." His head lolled to one side as he added, "She's kind of like an old friend."

Adam wriggled closer and Dr. Wujciak covered them both with a heavy lead-lined blanket and turned off the room lights. When he turned off the office lights, the spectacles gave the washboard glow an eerie look, as if they had just opened a crimson window to another world. The two were drawn in as they became mesmerized by the bright, translucent outline of the stone. The doctor twiddled with several dials and a second image appeared within the glimmering shell, denser and even darker than the rock which encased it. Unlike the irregular outline of the coal, the image of the encased object appeared rounded and smooth. Dr. Wujciak reached behind the board, rotated the coal and the two investigators both uttered a whispered 'wow!' almost in unison as they made out what looked like a coin or medallion having a hole in its center. Their noses were nearly touching the screen when a blinding flash of light filled the office, followed by the unmistakable stench of burned rubber. For a moment they continued to stare into the darkness. Dr. Wujciak reached up and switched on the office lights.

"I'm afraid that may be it for Old Flora. I think the flash came from her power supply."

Just when things were getting really interesting.

"It probably wasn't a good idea to keep the power up for very long. That's quite an interesting find, Adam."

Dr. Wujciak returned the enigmatic object to Adam. "What are you planning to do with it?"

"I don't know."

I'm going to crack that sucker open. That's what I'm planning to do with it.

"The object inside might be valuable. It could have historic importance. Perhaps you may consider having a scientist look at it. It really is unusual to find something like that stuck in a piece of coal. I know someone in the geology department at Rutgers that I could contact if you like."

Adam realized the doctor was trying to be helpful. "Thanks for the offer. But I think I want to wait on that. So … could we keep it a secret, sort of between you and me?"

"That's okay, Adam, just let me know when you're ready and I'll arrange for you to visit the university."

Adam smiled and nodded.

Dr. Wujciak patted Adam's back. "Now, put your shirt back on. You're in tip-top shape. Good luck this coming year at St. Harold's. And, just remember to let me know if you need any help with your discovery."

Ben Wujciak and Adam shared a love of science fiction and both were avowed Trekkies. As the doctor was leaving the examination room, Adam threw him the splayed finger Vulcan hand greeting. The tricky salutation was ably returned with a wink. Dr. Wujciak stepped out to let Adam's mom know that all was well.

The next morning Adam woke alone. Both parents were at work and the opportunity for discovery had finally arrived. Still in his pajamas, he grabbed the lump of coal and flew downstairs to his father's workshop in the cellar. There were tools everywhere, laid out on the workbench and hovering above it on the pegboard. Adam grabbed a screwdriver from the pegboard, holding both it and the coal in one hand, and wedged it against the bench top. The other hand reached for a hammer.

He tapped the coal. His micro-archeological dig seemed to go on for what seemed to him way too long, cleaving off chip after chip until at last, the coal split. The two halves shot off in opposite directions, launching a gleaming, golden coin-like object flying in an arc across the workshop. It landed on the concrete floor with a high-pitched ping and rolled under some wall shelving. Adam scrambled to the wall, reached under the bottom shelf, and closed his fingers around a half-dollar sized mystery. Holding it between his thumb and forefinger to the light bulb dangling in the center of the workshop, Adam's eyes gleamed as he saw that the object was indeed the size and shape of a half-dollar. It had a peculiar golden sheen, changing in intensity with every movement, however slight. There were several odd symbol-like indentations running along the edge. It had a perfectly round quarter-inch hole in its center. Adam knew he had come across a unique find, something that a university or museum would love to have. There would be no way he could keep the object if he made it public.

This treasure is mine and I'm going to keep it.

He never did keep his promise to get back to Dr. Wujciak, nor did he ever tell anyone else about it for the next twenty years.

* * *

Traveling at nearly the speed of light, a slate gray cylinder traced a path along the inside of the Milky Way's Orion Arm a dozen light-years from Earth's solar system. Its exterior, covered by numerous gashes and impact craters, spoke of a journey of an extensive length of time. The rounded ends provided no distinction between forward or aft sections. Buried within its body a complex array of machines sat in silence with the exception of one. A muffled hum from its bowels was followed by the appearance of an amber light embedded in an instrument panel. Several exterior engine mounts rotated into position, becoming visible as they emerged from the body of the cylinder. A series of colorful short bursts from conical elements of the engines resulted in a slight alteration of the cylinder's trajectory. The engines returned to their original, cloaked poses within the otherwise unremarkable exterior. The amber light faded into darkness.

This piece, Algorithm, is an excerpt of a forthcoming novel penned by Arthur M. Doweyko. As a scientist, Mr. Doweyko devoted much of his life to the discovery of novel drugs. He was a co-inventor of Sprycel, a new anti-cancer drug. He has turned his scientific background to writing science fiction and has published a number of award-winning short stories and several novels.  Mr. Doweyko is represented by Fran Black of Literary Counsel.

Story and pictures by Mr. Doweyko.

Connect with him:
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It is the middle of the day. A group of friends and I jump the fence surrounding a seaport. Security is nonexistent. There are no cameras, no police - there is no one in the port but us.

We run under a canopy of idle gantry cranes to a concrete pier. The facility is tiny, as far as seaports go. It is the watery equivalent to a neighborhood municipal airstrip, but also is home to several factories. Not too far along the curl of the bay, the smokestacks of a petroleum refinery spout flame into the sky like giant pilot lights.

Moored alongside the pier is a flat-top freighter. Interestingly, this freighter is low-slung, with its deck level to the pier. This is peculiar, as most freighters are built to float high above the waterline - take it for what it’s worth, it’s a dream, after all.

We cross the gangplank and steal away onto the ship. The crew is nowhere to be found. The deck is empty except for a about a dozen cardboard packages, each the size of a large watermelon.

Our group sets off to work the mischief we’ve come here to do, which is to reenact the events of Boston Tea Party. We make quick work of the parcels, and before too long all of them are floating in the brackish water.

Our devious deeds complete, we make a break for home. I stop after a few steps even as my friends are already scaling the perimeter fence. Standing on the concrete pier, I notice that one of the parcels we had tossed into the water was addressed to me. Pasted onto it was a letter I had written that had been stamped “Return to sender.” I focus with razor sharpness on my home address emblazoned on the envelope.

Paranoid thoughts steal into my mind. I’m really in trouble now - when the police arrive to investigate, they’ll get my street address from those packages, and somehow know that I was responsible for trespassing in the port facility. So that’s when I do what I’d felt heretofore was unthinkable - I sit down on the pier and dangle my legs over the edge, then slide off and land in the water.

Surprisingly, the water is shallow, rising up to about my waist. The water is brown and perfectly opaque, topped with that soap bubble sheen you get when mixing petroleum and water. I am thoroughly disgusted.

I wade through the sludge, keeping up a vain attempt to have as little of me touch the water. Once I get within reach of the packages, I scoop them up into my arms, snatching up the ones addressed to me and leaving the others.

All of them have my name on them.

“Crap!” I say, slapping the water with my palm. At just that moment I clap my jaws shut. It wouldn’t help to have someone hear me, nor did I want to risk accidentally ingesting some of the sludge I was wading in. A mental checklist of carcinogens flashes through my mind. My skin prickles.

I corral the floating parcels and wade back to the pier. That’s when I realize that there is no ladder.  The dockside is a sheer vertical face that rises well over my head. With my arms extended, I can just barely curl my fingers over the edge of the pier.

Knowing I’ve already put myself through too much to leave without the parcels, I throw them over my head onto land. Then, in a feat of superhuman strength (at least for me), I leap up, catch the lip of the wall with my hands, and haul my dripping-wet body out of the water.

I flop onto my chest atop the pier, roll onto my back, panting for breath. I am winded. The industrial stink leaves a coppery tang in the back of my throat. I scramble to my feet and reach for the packages so I can make my getaway.

Inexplicably, the packages have become several times heavier. Mind you, only a moment ago they floated on the surface of the water, and I did just throw them up to the pier from below, but now I can hardly budge even the smallest one. My only explanation for all this is that the packaging must have been made of oil for it to float so easily on the water below.

My ears perk to the sound of distant sirens drawing nearer. Forgetting the packages, I sprint - sneakers sopping wet and gushing all the way - to the perimeter fence and the alleyways beyond.

The old Buick was built like a tank - solid steel slicked over in weathered stoplight red paint. The car was eighteen years old, literally and figuratively.

Literally, in that the vehicle had more than crossed that age when its parts didn’t work like they did when new. In car years, which are shorter even than dog years, the Buick had reached the point in its life when it would have to make regular visits to its pharmacist for Viagra.

Figuratively, in that the car was by rights a teenager - a moody one at that - and the parts that still worked gave you attitude when you prodded them into action. Stomping the brake elicited frustrated groans from the front-wheel discs. The car would deign to stop when it felt was right, regardless of how hard you stood on the pedal. And when we finally did get the brakes fixed the shocks went bad. Mashing the pedal locked the tires like a vice, but the inertia of the two-ton rolling mass hurled the car (and its passengers, and everything in its cabin) careening forward at a thirty-degree decline.

It was great fun for us, as we always wore our seatbelts. Our passengers who didn’t wear theirs never saw the humor, especially the guy whose front teeth got embedded in the dashboard.

Toeing the brake sent the Buick into a sheer nosedive. Eventually, the tires would dig in and bring the car to a halt, but not before screeching ten car lengths down the pavement with the Buick’s trunk in the air. On hitting a dead stop, the sudden reversal of force would buck the car’s front bumper into the air, sometimes so hard that its front tires would pop up off the asphalt. Fifty-Dollar Hydraulics, we called the effect, because that was what the brake job had cost.

In retrospect, we should have known better than to expect much from a fifty-dollar brake job. It was probably not the best idea we’d had, because the Buick, old as it was, was probably worth as much. Even so, we were eighteen then, too, and we had that in common with the car. It was something we could bond over.

Summertime rolled around. School let out, and we were without cash or anywhere to go, and sitting in a car worth more in parts than intact. Sitting shotgun in the red Buick with my friend at the wheel, we coasted down suburban streets in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood. Up ahead on the right was the supermarket where we’d occasionally get lunch between classes. It was 3:00 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, and the parking lot was empty save for a half dozen cars and twice as many shopping carts scattered across the pavement. A teen in a green apron collected the carts into a long train while his co-worker hustled down the pavement for the lone stragglers further afield.

My friend cut a sharp right off the roadway and pulled into the lot, sending the Buick’s tail into a shimmy. He punched the gas and the tires spun, catapulting the car’s rear into a crescent-moon power slide. The teen pushing the train of carts threw his hands in the air and leaped backward as the Buick smashed through the line. Shards of shopping cart baskets fell like stainless steel rain.

The Buick recovered from its one-eighty turn, spun to a halt with its tires whirling in place. Engine roaring, tires flailing, the Buick lurched forward, hesitant, testing its prey like a bull pawing the dirt in anticipation of a charge. In its sights was a lone shopping cart.

Like a spring released, the Buick launched forward once the tires caught asphalt. We were pressed into our seats as the cabin went skyward - all the power to the rear wheels bucked the front end airborne. The car bobbed on its chassis as its acceleration leveled out and we hit thirty miles per hour halfway down the length of the plaza.

My friend leapt in his seat and came down onto the brake with the full weight of his body. The car shuddered with the rapid reversal of force, its inertia dragging it along, kicking and screaming, even while it dug its heels in to stop. I slid up and out of my lap belt, was tossed against the dashboard and split the roof-mounted fold-down mirror in two with my face. Then I was thrown back against my seat again, snapping the vertical seatback into the reclining position as the car stopped.

The Buick must have hopped several feet off the ground, because in our windshield was nothing but sky. A blur of chromed metal soared up and over us as the shopping cart our fighting bull of a Buick had hooked went airborne. The Buick’s front bumper had caught the shopping cart in the sweet spot between the underside of its basket and its lower brace, catapulting it no less than fifty feet into the air. The cart soared, tumbling, in a near-vertical path, disappearing for a heartbeat as it passed in front of the sun. Its fall was cut short when its basket got caught in the bough of a nearby tree. It swayed there, dinged and dented, too hurt to come down, and too insulted to do anything but stay where it was.

The store manager, a squat, balding man whose scalp had migrated over the years to his hairy forearms, had seen everything. He ran three paces from the supermarket’s front doors and stopped short when he beheld the chaos we’d caused.

We gunned it for home and cut a hard turn around the cul-de-sac where my friend lived, our tires tracing mud runnels across his front lawn. He mashed the brake and skidded the Buick into his garage, which - thankfully - was open by the time we arrived. We rolled down the garage door and hoped the cops hadn’t seen us.

Swapping the red Buick for our bikes, we pedaled back to the supermarket and got there twenty minutes later. The two kids from before were still out in the lot, one of them with a push broom and dustbin, scooping up bits of those shopping carts we had reduced to slivers. The other kid held a push broom too, except he used his as a prod to try to coax the shopping cart out of its tree. He’d have sooner gotten the cart down if it were a cat in a tree and he’d called the fire department, as the cart was a good foot or so above the end of his broom, even when he stood on tiptoes.

All the while the manager stood under the cart in the tree, shaking his head and throwing his hands up in exasperation.

Who better than he, an authority figure, to serve as our referee, and his throwing his arms up signified nothing less than that our field goal attempt had been successful.

Us: three points. Supermarket: zero.

The afternoon had been uneventful. I made a right turn and rolled into heavy traffic just before the T-intersection at 57th avenue. That should have been the first sign something was off.

The dashboard clock read 2:36. Traffic was never so thick at this intersection so early in the afternoon. Hell, it wasn’t even a through-street. This roadway was a traffic artery that dead-ended at the edge of a neighborhood airport. Most days at this hour, you could lie down in the street and nap uninterrupted until the evening rush, when the rich moms in their SUV’s came to pick up their tots from day school.

Something else caught my eye. A new yellow caution sign had been put up: Warning! Dangerously Excessive Noise Levels Ahead.

Dangerously excessive. I chuckled at the thought. What traffic jargon genius thought that one up? I snapped a picture of it with my phone’s camera, making a mental note to upload it to that comedy website that consumed so much of my time at work. Meanwhile, João Gilberto sang a duet with his guitar: “Chega de saudade, a realidade é que sem ela não há paz...”

The earth shook. My phone tumbled out of my hand and onto the passenger seat. There was a distant hiss, like water coursing through long-dry pipes, and then a dull thud. A shrieking missile shot out of an underground silo, trailing a fiery tail like a comet splitting the skies in its passing.

The cars ahead lurched forward, zigzagging haphazardly to get away before the missile touched ground.

The rocket slammed into the open field at the airport’s outer fringes. Dirt hailed down onto the passing cars as a tiny mushroom cloud blossomed just within the airport’s perimeter fence.

Times must really be tough when the municipal airport in an upscale neighborhood has to lease some of its land to a munitions proving facility just to get by.

A cacophony of horns blared. Cars elbowed past each other to flee the intersection. A semi-truck hopped the center median and roared past the gridlock, stripping the side view mirrors off of several luxury sedans in its path. Meanwhile, chartered jets headed for the airport runway veered in sweeping arcs as the air went thick with rockets.

We're at it again - Transit Dreams, our collection of short stories and vignettes, is out now! Best of all, it's available for free.
 
Ah, so what's it about you ask? Transit Dreams is a curious collection of short stories and vignettes loosely themed around going places, getting around, and going nowhere. The most bizarre thing about these short stories is that some are true.

This anthology is now available for FREE on Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.

Unabashed heroics. Nonstop peril. Romance. These are the things Marco keeps clear of. Unfortunately, that's exactly what's in store for him.

Set in a sixteenth century fantasy world, The Gullwing Odyssey tells the tale of Marco Gullwing, a young man who takes his menial job much too seriously. He wants nothing more than simply to work his menial messenger job until he can retire. But when an unusual assignment sends him across the ocean, he finds himself without a means of getting back home. No sooner has his journey begun than he is beset by a neurotic bureaucrat, an overzealous knight, a headstrong princess, and a conniving wizard, each with his or her own agendas.

Pulled in so many directions at once, Marco sees sour prospects for attaining his modest retirement dreams, much less getting out of the whole mess alive. Will Marco rise to the challenge and be the hero he tries so hard not to be?

Check out the series website for more info: www.GullwingOdyssey.com

Sample the first three chapters for free.

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