BEYOND, AND BELOW … A SEARCH FOR WHO WE ARE …
Imagine your entire world snatched away. Leaving you redundant, cold, and lost. No one can hear you. You’re receding. Caught like a fly on a spider’s web, muffled or choked on a dark trip that tugs you down through midnight water. Everything you took as tangible and normal pulled apart, revealing a gaping hole where the dark things creep out.
How to fight back … ?
Such is the challenge that faces Sir Garland and Queen Ariane of the Swords in the final book comprising the Journeyman Trilogy. A darker thread to the ongoing Legends of Ansu series.
The Sea God’s Woman concludes the trilogy that started with The Emerald Queen and continued through The Voyage of Carlo Sarfe. Our stalwarts find themselves deep underwater and weaving through the cosmic wilderness to confront …
The Orb of the Shadowman.
A faceless entity hiding an army of demons. A rising tide of menace impossible to define. A star devouring scar created by a fallen god.
How can our stalwarts battle a phenomenon so intangible?
The answer lies with courage, destiny, and hope. A belief that the universe will prevail. Mend itself, like a body heals its wounds. By focusing on a knowing … or perhaps just a feeling … that it will be okay. This is all part of a pattern.
I like to call that … knowing… a dance. The dance of life and death. The Sea God’s Woman hints at that dance. The sliding gateways to what lies beyond. I recently spent a month looking at a hospital ceiling, unable to move. The only break in the monotony was the nurse coming in to suck more blood from my veins. I drafted three books in my head, focused on cold beer, cussing and my wife’s lovely eyes. A minute becomes an hour. The challenge keeping one’s head above the drowning waves. But there’s a key. A neat trick we all can employ. Positivity. That’s the answer. It’s who we are. That self belief and faith whatever form it takes – this is your journey and yours alone.
So keep going …
Ariane must confront her demons beneath the ocean. Sir Garland––named in honor of the late JRR Tolkien artist, my friend Roger Garland––must conquer his doubts when looking deep into the abyss.
HERE’S A GLIMPSE OF WHAT HE’S UP AGAINST:
Garland was out of time. The darkness sucked at him as spiderwebs clung to his breath, rasping and coughing, the slippery ground beneath him crumbling away.
“Where is this?” His voice echoed around his ears.
No reply. His friends were gone. And it was coming. The beast. Growling, slavering, loping toward him. A shambling shadow. Hard to define. The few glances back he’d risked had revealed a doglike shape. A huge shaggy hound, blacker than the darkness clinging to his face. Except the eye. A solitary lobe, slanted and sloped and red as a candle-bright ruby.
Black Schuck is hunting you …
The voice echoed inside his head. He shut it out and ran, legs heavy, exhausted. Chest thudding, heart pounding, the rasping shuffling noises behind reaching out to smother his courage. Panting, padding, claws scraping on the bone cracked floor.
The Schuck comes, and he comes for you, Sir Garland …
“Dunrae!” He fought off the rising panic.
He’d lost them, his companions. The big man in the coat with his shoulder-cannon and the small twisted imp he knew as Zorc. A creature from another time. I’m trapped in Limbo. That was the only explanation. He’d taken a wrong turn. The game was almost up.
His legs were slowing, heavy like molten lead. His feet felt like they belonged to someone else. Remote and far away, the veins connecting, burning like hot treacle, the stifling air sucking away the last of his breath. Was he dying?
I can’t go on …
The panting behind deepened to a hungry growl. It’s closing behind me … I’m … Against his will. He turned and saw it.
The hound.
Taller than him, shaggy and dark. So dark it made a hole in the black. The one red sloping eye. But this time there were teeth. Slavering broken yellow knives, the stench of that breath almost choking him senseless.
Garland staggered, veered away, somehow staying on his feet. He summoned strength, but none came. Tried to move, but his feet cracked open on the bone-strewn ground. Glancing down, he saw his boots were rotten and white eel-like worms spewed from the torn melting leather.
This is not happening …
The hound leapt upon his back, its claws ripping his flesh like a harrow raking a dry wheat field. The cloying darkness swallowed his scream.
MEANWHILE, ARIANE FACES A DIFFERENT CHALLENGE
Queen Ariane walked the path approaching the first hut. Her heart leaped as she saw a hunched figure huddled by a small fire, mending fishing nets and smoking a pipe. She approached slowly, hands held out so she didn’t alarm him.
“It’s Ariane, your queen. How fares my city? Is all lost?”
The man ignored her working on his net. A second fellow appeared and called him. He waved and nodded.
“It’s Ariane! Your queen. I’m addressing you, man. Didn’t you hear me?”
But he hadn’t heard and showed no sign. Perhaps he was deaf? She waved at the second man. But he looked right past her, as though seeing something arriving in the harbor. She turned and saw the ship enter.
Kraken Girl.
She approached the seated man and made to slap his shoulder, but her hand passed through him as though he wasn’t there.
She felt her heart thudding and panic rising. What had happened to her? What had Rann done? The bitch. Was she dead? She made to grab the man’s collar, but again, her hands gripped nothing. She kneeled down and yelled in his ear. He didn’t respond.
The second man reappeared with two tankards of ale. He passed one to his companion, and they laughed as they watched Kraken Girl clear the gate rocks.
My friends will see me.
She walked along the quay as the ship approached. She saw Taic at the helm. Cale and Doyle standing beside him. She waved, but they didn’t react. She quelled her panic and waited, watching as Kraken Girl docked. She heard the banter between the Northmen crew, and the stevedores and longshoremen waiting to see what they’d brought. They all seemed in high spirits.
But the city …
Ariane walked the gangway as Taic signaled his men to purchase goods stored at the harbor shop. They were laughing. She heard Cale joke and stare right at her.
She yelled in his face, but he didn’t respond. She ran at him, spat, punched him, but her fist found nothing. They couldn’t see her. For them, she didn’t exist.
Rann. What have you done to me …?
Want to know how the queen and her champion fare? Sea God’s Woman is available for pre-order on Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7WK35LX
You can book your copy of the trilogy boxed set edition here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7WYSMMY
That’s it from me! I hope you enjoy my rambles on this blog. Please leave a comment if so. It’s always great to know what readers think. Want to know more about the Legends of Ansu. Check out our website by clicking on the link below:
Thanks for reading! Take care, it’s wild out there!
J.W.W.
