Anyways, I am a writer. I generally like to write in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, with an occasional stopover in Transgressive and Horror, and some poetry, too.
Every other week I will be posting a short segment of a novel I have been writing currently (and terribly) titled "Silver and Gold." I hope you enjoy it. In the weeks in between I will be posting whatever it is that catches my fancy, probably stories or poems.
Anyways, nice to meet you. Pull up a chair/just keep sitting where you are fatty, and enjoy this wonderful yarn:
PS: Please feel free to leave comments on what you liked and didn't like. I don't mind those didn't likes so don't feel like you have to hold your punches.
PPS: Seriously! I really don't mind! If you want to tell me you're going to track me down and devour my first born child in front of my eyes as revenge for my terrible desecration of the English language's already iffy virtue, I'll be overjoyed to hear from you!
Silver and Gold
JS Harlow
Prologue: A Soldier of the Army of the Dark
And the nights were too blank in the Gardens. One by one the lamps on the streets of the village had been covered. With no stars and no moon through the clouds and no flames on the street corners it was as if the world, like the lamps, had been shuttered. To all the drunkards in the Hoary Stag Fulkton Gardens was black like ink. To all the world the town was black. To all the world the world was black, but not to Taim. To Taim the world was muted colors. He wished that what he saw was black, as well. His eyes were gold and they shone with all the bar room's candlelight.
He'd been so proud to come home. He'd spit in his father's face. The sagging dregs of the wide, razor wire man had done nothing. His son was a soldier, now, of The King's army. Not even Regid Corwin would raise a hand against a werewolf of the Army of the Dark. You did not bite the hand of The King, god vampire, ruler of Gehenna.
Taim had polished his brass the day he had spit in his father's face but the sun had not been shining. It rarely did in Fulkton Gardens. He had hated the town then and worn his black and shine to spite them all. And now? To all the world Fulkton Gardens was black like ink, but to Taim. To Taim the shadows were not dark enough. He drank and blurred the focus of his eyes.
"Taim, I wish you'd tell me what's got you in such a mood."
Hellory Vance. She was plump and cheerful in a linen dress. Pale, blue eyes, black hair: of local stock. His brother might love her but Taim could not stomach her tonight.
"An ale, Hellory."
The girl rocked forward onto the wide counter surrounding the bar and took hold of his empty glass. She turned and went to one of the two kegs of sweet spring ale by the inn's entrance and filled it, and then returned the glass to him.
Taim turned his gaze to stare into the head of his drink and watch it die. Hellory moved down the bar counter to talk to some of the other customers. She was coaxing them to leave. Was it that late already? She did not talk to him, though. She wanted to, after the customers were gone.
She returned to him. It had been twenty minutes and the rest of the drunks had gone. All of the candles but one had been guttered. Taim did not care. He was well equipped to drink in the dark.
"Are you going to be here for the wedding, Taim?"
His ale was half empty. He had come in late tonight, after the final staff shift had turned over. He had gone through glasses of ale without stopping until he could not care about his thoughts. Now, though, he was drunk. He only wanted to stare into his glass.
Hellory was sitting barefoot beside him. He could see her naked calves. When had she slipped her shoes off?
"Tord would be happy. Are you listening?"
"Yes. Ale, Hellory."
"But you've not finished the one you've got."
She got another ale for him.
Once he had the second ale he moved it close to his first to consider. He was doing a very good job of not thinking. He wished his ale was a darker color. He did not want to see even a little of the counter through the glass. If he could not see the counter then perhaps he would start moving and he would not be sitting here and getting ready to kill his lover. He would not have a knot of silk in his back pocket prepared to strangle the life out of her near-infant daughter.
It's a soldier's duty, isn't it?
"You're not listening. Is this about Lili again?"
Taim did not look away from his ale. He wanted it darker. He wanted it to be black, tonight.
"You two always get into fights, Taim. Cheer up!"
There's fate, as well.
Hellory gave him a shove on the shoulder. It was a playful shove. She knew Taim and she knew his moods. He was a dark one. He was a wild one. Taim knew that was how she and the rest in Fulkton Gardens saw him. Even as a soldier. Especially. You did not bother a man like Taim Corwin.
Hellory Vance was his brother's fiance. She looked past his darkness.
She was a vile woman tonight. He did not bother to look at her. Still, she must have sensed something in the cast of his shoulders. She went stiff. He could smell her sweat, now, with his animal nose. It smelled uneasy. She needed to bathe more.
It was amazing how sensitive humans were to danger.
Taim closed his eyes.
"Hell. I don't know talking."
"This isn't about Lili."
Her voice was tighter. His eyes turned from his glass to regard her. He did not bother to lift his head.
"It is about Lili. Taim?"
Taim stood up. His black uniform pulled tight across his chest as his shoulders fell into alignment. He had been hunched over the bar for too long. He had forgotten that feeling of tightness. He was too broad for standard dress. Like his father.
He had shined his brass again tonight. The nights in Fulkton Gardens were too blank for that sort of thing. He had shined it anyways
"I'm going."
"Taim?"
I am a soldier. I cannot run from duty. I traded myself for it, after all.
That was the only way he could think now. Now that he was risen it was too late to think of different things. Lili was sleeping in one of the rooms upstairs. The brown foreign gentle giant woman with the lavender eyes had given him a reason to love Fulkton Gardens. And now he had to kill her. But not yet.
"I'm going for a walk, Hellory. Leave the Stag open for me."
Hellory should have been up in the servant's quarters an hour ago and he was telling her to stay up, now, to let him back in even later. Taim was in a black mood. He couldn't bring himself to care.
"Could you give this to Reah when you see her tonight, Taim?"
He had turned to go to the door, but he turned back now. Hellory had a black fall lily in her hand. They were delicate things, growing in only the deepest parts of Gehenna's northern forests. This one had survived in Hellory's pocket while she worked. Seeing it he wished it hadn't.
When Taim did not reply, she pressed onwards.
"For her to give to her mother. I didn't get to see the girl this evening."
Lili loved flowers. They were something she loved and so Taim had tried to love them, too.
Two nights ago...
Now he felt sick. He caught a scab as he moved his right hand's fingers through his brown hair. He was too dead drunk and tired to wince over it.
Hellory stepped forward, quiet, and put the flower in his hand. Taim placed it on a nearby table, on one of the chairs that had been stacked on top of it.
"Taim!"
He walked out the door.
2 comments:
I would threaten such, but I'm a vegetarian, so it'd probably ring hollow.
why do you start all your sentences (well the majority of them) with either a preposition or the word "he"?
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