Sneak attack: (n). A sudden, unexpected application of force on a person or locale.

Shark attack: (n). A sudden, unexpected application of force on a person by a shark. Also, one of the most unsafe times to go swimming.

Snark attack: (n). A sudden, unexpected application of snarkiness. Usually results in laughter. Typically harmless. Sharks are incapable of this.

Let's face it: there are so many good (and not so good) books to read these days. Some readers prefer the classics while others gush over the latest paranormal romance between an Egyptian mummy and a preteen aardvark-shapeshifter. Whatever your pleasure, our mission today is to give you a bite-sized synopsis of a book we've read. In case you didn't know, we're professional nerds so we read a lot. Most of the books we've read are venerable enough to be considered classics in their own right, but that's only two of the three criteria for making this list. The third, and most important criterion: these were books we suffered through.

So now, without further ado, we bring you our snark attack of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Please refrain from hurling stones and other objects at us until the end, thank you.

There once was a short hairy lazy guy who lived in his family's basement. An old hairy smart guy showed up at his door with twenty short hairy smelly guys. The hairy smelly guys were called: Fodder and Dodder; Casualty, Basualty, and Rasualty; and Only Guy We Care About.

Then, just as soon as he had foisted the smelly guys onto the lazy guy, the old guy disappeared, warning them all that they were in grave danger and that he (the old guy) would do nothing to help them. Notwithstanding that, the old guy occasionally popped up out of nowhere to destroy hordes of bad guy fodder, only to  disappear again.

The group traveled for weeks. All the while, the smelly hairy guys carried on a call-and-response chant where some talked about mutton and the rest yelled back, "At your service!"

Along the way, several of the smelly hairy guys died (guess which), but not Only Guy We Care About or the titular character, because that would be silly. Eventually, everyone blundered onto a raging battlefield. More armies joined the melee. A bizarre bird migration joined the melee. Then it all became a freakish sort of medieval multi-car freeway pile-up that hardly no one lived through. Thankfully, titular short guy survived by turning invisible and falling asleep even as the bodies piled up around him.

Only Guy We Care About was mortally wounded in battle and died on his bed, but not before being declared the king of the smelly hairy guys (those that survived, at least). The titular short hairy lazy guy goes back home with a piece of jewelry that would prompt a curious obsession and a book trilogy.

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.

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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.

Growing up, I lived in a small town that had had its heyday in the 40’s. We were a rail stop for equipment during the war, and afterward many GI’s settled here. Unfortunately, when the war ended, so too did the regular visits from the trains. The town had just about had its coffin nailed shut when they built the freeway in ‘62.

My mom and I moved here in ’78, just the two of us. I was twelve years old. Mom waited tables at the truck stop diner. We couldn’t make the rent on her pay alone, and so at the tender age of twelve I got a job as a stock clerk at Madame Sundry’s Sundries Emporium.

Madame Sundry was an elderly Bahamian lady who ran the store from her home. She lived upstairs and had converted the first floor into her shop. No one in town liked her much because of her idiosyncrasies. For one, she was a black lady in a predominantly white town. She was also a successful entrepreneur. While not wealthy by any stretch, she wore her pearls every Sunday. That lady had a mind for business. Anything Madame Sundry wanted, she got. She was a regular at the estate sales and always paid in cash. Already well advanced in years, she had an ancient face that creased like dry leather. Among my friends I called her Madame Sun-Dried, but always glanced over my shoulder beforehand to make sure she wasn’t within earshot.

She hired me on and I started work on a Thursday, thinking the job would be easy. No one in town ever stopped by the store. Everyone knew everyone, and it would be awkward for Hankerson or Comstock to buy a brooch for his wife that once belonged to their deceased neighbor. Our only customers, the days we had any, were people driving through town. It got me into thinking how Sundry could afford to stay open. As it turned out, there wasn’t much time to think. Sundry was a tough boss, quick to remind me that she didn’t pay me to stand idle.

Each penny you drop in that well as you wish
Corrodes into poison that stifles a fish.

Each balloon you let fly on warm summer days
Gets lodged in seals’ throats and they too pass away.

Each rainbow you see that brightens your mood
Is somebody’s torrent of rainfall and flood.

Each dime on the ground that you should pick up
Fell out of the pocket of a guy with hard luck.

Each triumph you earn, though wrought at great cost,
Means that someone else had to have lost.

So all the good times in the past that you’ve had,
Means you’ve made someone, somewhere, sad.

And all the good fortune that should befall you,
It results from someone else’s getting screwed.

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.

All painted up, she looks like a Patrick Nagel portrait gone bad.

Meet Mabel. She's the last person you'd want to meet.

Her style is definitely locked in the early eighties, what with her hair up in a Pompadour poof. Below her padded shoulder jacket, Mabel's pencil skirt stretches at its seams like an overstuffed sack of potatoes. She isn't pretty, though no one would dare tell her that to her face.

Mabel's temper is on a hair-trigger. Differences of opinion often go her way after starting an impromptu shouting match. When that fails her (and it rarely does) she relies on the sort of persuasion that comes from shoving her pocket .357 into people's faces.

For Mabel, fear is an effective employee relations tool.

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.

Though I've sometimes been called extreme in my views (and that's being polite), if nothing else, my methods are effective. The reason for this is, when I encounter a problem (or problematic person), I'm enough of a creative jackass to devise a clever fix. Clever fixes, you see, are the best sort, especially when your problems are other people.

Creative people come up with solutions. Jackasses make other people feel bad about themselves. Therefore, infallible logic informs us that creative jackasses come up with solutions that make evil jackasses feel bad about themselves. They're Chaotic-Good on the alignment table.
 
If the world were populated solely with creative jackasses, it would be an obnoxious place to live... but everything would work. For instance:

Prison Violence
 Oh, so there was a stabbing in the prison cafeteria? No problem. Replace all the eating utensils with cotton balls and announce soup is on the menu. Bon appétit!
 
Deforestation
 Oh, so there's a paper mill in town stripping your pristine forests bare? Just call some arsonists and burn the forest down -- that factory will have to shut down! Wait a minute...
 
Healthcare
 I went to the doctor for an x-ray of my foot. He put the film up on the screen and said, "I see what's been causing your ankle pain. You see that there?" he asked, pointing to a dislocated bone splinter.
 
"It's that bone there, but we can't see it very well so we'll need an MRI. That will cost another $5,000."
 
I scratched my head and responded, "You mean you need an MRI to see that thing you and I can see is right there?"
 
Unapologetic, he said, "Yes."
 
So I handed him my glasses, saying, "Doc, maybe you need these more than I do."
 
Putting It All Together
 The gamut of societal problems we face -- crime, nepotism, workplace abuse, nasty neighbors -- all boil down to a simple concept: "My comfort or convenience is more important than your necessities."
 
Think about how true this is the next time you take grandma for a doctor's visit and some scumbag rolls his luxury SUV into the last wheelchair accessible parking space -- and then jaunts out of his car, strutting like he owns the place. Now you've got to park all the way in the back of the lot, struggle to get granny out of the car, then wheel her across several hundred feet of tarmac in blazing heat (or snow, if you prefer). All this, just because some self-absorbed ambulatory dirtbag considered himself too important to walk -- and took the spot reserved for someone who can't.
 
Things like this make a man's hand itch for a brick to put through someone's windshield -- luxury SUV windshield. Not that I've ever done that or would condone it, no... But still, I've seen this enough times, you'd think I'd have thrown enough bricks to make a house.

Be nice to people... or else.