Whispered Magics

Riley must make some hard decisions and will need a little help from both her family and friends. Things in Diamond City are about to change in a big way and Riley will be in the middle of it all. Relationships will be tested, lives will be put on the line, and a new threat will enter into the fray making for a highly intense, compelling, and gripping read.

I love this dynamic duo and the world Ms. The chemistry between Price and Riley is off the charts, and I love the way they banter back and forth. Price gives as good as he gets from Riley which keeps her on her toes. Be forewarned, however, that this one ends abruptly in a huge cliffhanger. I highly recommend this series. This series is destined for my keeper shelf. After escaping the FBI, Riley and her family have become fugitives, and not just from the law. Every bad guy on the planet wants a piece of Riley.

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Gregg has been kidnapped. She has little time to worry about any of that before all hell breaks loose in Diamond City, and she finds herself smack dab in the crossfire. If she succeeds, she makes herself an even bigger target. If she fails, everybody she cares about dies. The Diana Pharaoh Francis newsletter keeps you informed whenever there is a new book out or if there is news to be announced. Diana's newsletter is spam-free and private. Diana respects your privacy and will never share or sell your info with anyone. Each one is sharp, perceptive and lyrical, and packs an emotional punch.

I could have wished one or two to be a little longer or more complex — in fact I could see at least one being the basis for a novella or novel - but this collection is one of the most satisfying I've read for a long time. This is a collection of short stories written over about twenty years, most of them for invitational anthologies, as short is not my natural form. One story, "Mom and Dad at the Home Front," was written because I had become a parent, and so I was thinking about the other side of what happens when kids go to a magic world.

To my surprise, this one made it to the Nebula finalist list. So all these stories concern kids in some ways, some funny and some not, though none are tragedies as I hated those This is a collection of short stories written over about twenty years, most of them for invitational anthologies, as short is not my natural form. So all these stories concern kids in some ways, some funny and some not, though none are tragedies as I hated those as a kid.

Some have broken kids, because I knew plenty, others are more upbeat. They all have magic, except for a couple with science fiction, and one. Sep 09, Maggie rated it it was amazing Shelves: I really adored this book. Sometimes short story anthologies are hit or miss perhaps moreso when there are multiple authors but there wasn't a story here I didn't like. All of them left me wanting more yet all them were really perfect short stories. As someone relatively new to writing short stories, I greatly admire Sherwood Smith's skill in writing them. I highly recommend this little anthology of stories about magic.

Sep 09, Lovely Rita rated it it was amazing Shelves: Deirdre Mcmurtry rated it it was amazing May 27, Paula rated it really liked it Sep 10, Efrat rated it liked it Aug 11, Kay rated it really liked it Feb 27, Saifa rated it really liked it Feb 07, Kirsten Naughton rated it liked it Feb 29, Elaysee rated it liked it Oct 29, Jason rated it really liked it Feb 26, Jenn rated it really liked it Feb 08, Eliana rated it really liked it Nov 06, ECL rated it really liked it Aug 07, Aimee rated it liked it Jan 05, Susan rated it it was amazing Jul 01, A breeze teased its way through the branches.

Lake water lapped the shore with short sighs. Whispers chased in my head in a voice that sounded less and less like the twisted mutterings of a cursed wind and more and more like Nicol. The old chief has lived long past his prime. Who is he to demand obedience when he can no longer even cast a spear accurately or with enough force to kill a deer, much less a man, much less a dragon? He has raised three to be his favored heirs while his own firstborn son he neglects, even though that worthy son has killed a dragon at long last after so many years being mocked for his insufficiencies.

The gods granted their favor to the old man, everyone agrees.

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That favor ought to pass on to his son, shouldn't it? Yet he has been pushed to the farthest edge of the chiefdom, forced to rule over fishermen and live amid the stink. What if such a worthy son has something better than a dragon's skull as his trophy? What if he has dragons at his command? Killing a dragon is a bold hunter's deed, of course, not to be scorned. But for a dragon to serve a human? Now that is the standard of a leader. It could be your measure. If you march against the other heirs. If you defeat them, and kill your father.

A dragon could respect such a person as that, could he not? I was slow to understand. Te Ju Ki's calm and measured teachings had found a home in my heart; they made sense to me. Even when the young man mobilized his warriors and gave a mighty speech to them about the portent of the dragons and how they had shown their favor by flying overhead and not burning the settlement or killing anyone, I did not understand. Even when they marched out with brisk purpose, he mounted on a splendid steed with his scale-clad officers beside him, I did not understand.

I was convinced they were going to join the others, to make common cause against us, even when such a course of action made no sense. We two dragons were there, right in front of them. Again and again the chief's son gestured toward Nicol, who remained aloft keeping a cautious eye upon the ballista but with his attention focused mostly upon the chief's son. As the last of the foot soldiers passed under the gate, Nicol dropped down to the longhouse. He raked his claws along its ridge beam, marking it, and roared, just once, like a challenge or a benediction.

A great answering cheer rose from the ranks. Singing their violent songs, they marched away toward the central settlement. Nicol flew out to me where I had remained hanging back, over the lake. Humans are riddled with hate and envy and fear and greed. They will easily do our bidding.

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You just have to know where to stick your claw in to get the response you want. The chief's son marched to the central settlement, now without its garrison of fearsome warriors, and he killed the chief's supporters and installed himself on the throne. Meanwhile Nicol roosted atop the birth mountain and with his presence there lured the two heirs each with their band of warriors higher and higher up the slopes, round and around until the two factions came face to face upon a rugged field of ancient lava.

There they fought bitterly amid the sharp stones, the middle-aged man against the young woman. While the two armies struggled, Nicol flew down to the unguarded temple and burned it and its acolytes to the ground. But he left the bewildered chief alive amid the charred bones and beams. He picked up the old man almost tenderly in his claws and flew with him to the fourth and final settlement where the chief's second wife had set up as one of his heirs after she, too, had killed a dragon. She was the mage who had first ensorcelled venom.

When Nicol gently deposited the old man alone and unprotected in her courtyard, she strode out. She was an impressive woman with the shine of intelligence in her face. Her braided hair, wrapped atop her head, was wreathed with pearls and gems. Armed attendants knelt before the old chief, who even in his disheveled and terrified state barked orders at her, demanding a bath and food and fresh clothing appropriate to his exalted station. He wrested the secret of the venom from you. He shared it with others and stole what was your right: You are the worthy one. Yet those two usurpers who sit by his side and flatter him think they deserve the dragon killer's banner, while his first wife's puling son grabs for what belongs to you.

She snapped her fingers. Her attendants jumped up and formed a ring around him, with their weapons pointing not out, to protect him, but in, to threaten him. I raised you from the swamp grass hut where you were born. I allowed you to learn from my cleverest mages. You will bow before me as is fitting. She stalked forward and pressed the tip of her dragon claw staff against his face until, trembling, he fell to his knees before her. I raised myself despite you using me as if I were your slave.

You stole what should be mine by right. She stabbed him once, twice, and thrice, and had his bloody, bloated body thrown into the stinking refuse of a latrine. You, my Jeskai students, have not heard of the dragon-killers' war. It happened a long time ago and in a place unknown to you. No one wrote its history because writing did not yet exist, and those who survived told a different tale than the one I am telling you now. So the truth of those events was lost, even to their descendants. As for me, I crouched atop the birth mountain shocked by what I witnessed because I did not know what to do or why the humans behaved so violently and horribly to each other.

The fighting raged in a storm of destruction until only the wife and the son remained, entrenched behind higher walls, the remnants of the other two heirs' armies split between them. The fields went untended. People began to starve. There was nothing I could do, or at least that's what I kept thinking, my thoughts running in circles after circles after circles. Until the night, I woke from a troubled sleep to find Nicol gone. I flew on his trail, for all dragons are able to follow the ember-strewn wake left by our kind. It seemed his voice caught in my mind as if he was still speaking to me.

In the central settlement, in the grand courtyard in front of the chief's longhouse, torches burned. Nicol perched atop the longhouse with his eyes glittering like gems against the night. It was a strange piece of magic that he could stretch atop the roof beam without his great weight collapsing the structure, but we dragons have many strands of magic woven into our being. In the courtyard, the chief's son and the chief's second wife faced each other.

How they had come there, and why they were both unarmed, I could not say, but they looked so handsome together, like the fitting end to a romantic tale. Who spoke I did not know. My ears were clouded, and my heart was dark with foreboding. They released each other. The torchlight twisted shadow across the scene as they each took the dragon claw of their reign, she the staff and he a long knife.

Each plunged their claw into the breast of the other, and they fell together and, soaked in each other's blood, they died. It was Nicol, rising from the roof beam, his horns gleaming and his eyes shining with a glamor that dizzied me. I rule you now. I am your true leader.

A vast and fearful sigh passed through the assembly. People sank to their knees, pressing hands against faces. Deep in his coruscating gaze I caught a glimpse of the brothers with the wagon, back in Arcades's orderly realm, working in amity. That peace had been shattered by the abrupt upwelling of a long-buried grudge because Nicol had stuck a claw of doubt and envy into a vulnerable heart. The man, so stricken, had succumbed to a whisper that roused the worst in him. Least of the fallen! We'll show them, won't we? We'll no longer be least. They'll bow before us.

You know it's what you want. The power can be ours.

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It will be ours. But power wasn't what I wanted. He didn't understand me at all. He didn't even care to understand me. All he cared about was getting what he wanted, no matter the cost to those around him. No matter the cost to me. What a pain flowered in my hearts, a cascade of searing shock and betrayal.

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It's bad enough that he had so callously, so gleefully, torn through the minds of these humans to get what he wanted from them. He meant to rouse the worst in me, because he had succumbed to the worst in himself, and he wanted to drag me down with him. He wanted to use me for his own ends, because he had never truly cared for me at all. The bond we shared. The trust we held in each other.

It was empty, broken, false. A harsh, hot spark burst in my heart and in my head. My flesh burned as if incinerated and charred. A scouring wind whirled down from inside and outside the heavens and dragged me into a terrifying storm of darkness where I could not even draw breath and felt my lungs being crushed by a weight of dread. A force twisted my body as if trying to turn me inside out. For an instant, my mind went blank, unseeing, unfeeling, and then with a wrench, I came back to myself.

Whispered Magics

To my astonishment, I found myself floating above a featureless sea, so flat and still I could see my own reflection in the water: I drifted in bewilderment, rended by the grief of losing the brother I had trusted and stupefied by the sheer jarring astonishment of being torn from the only place I had never known and flung into the space between the planes. For I understood then that Te Ju Ki had taught me the truth, that she had seen this place in a vision. She was physically frail, tied to the soil of her home, but her mind could range where her body and magic could not go. She thought no one could cross between worlds, but now I was there, walking between the planes she had told me about.

With that thought like an anchor, I fell as a shooting star falls: When I woke again in my body, I stood here, awake, afresh, alive, on Tarkir. And I felt the land welcome me, as if I had finally come home. Nicol had been right after all: I had witnessed the end, and this was my new beginning. Tae Jin broke off. Thunder boomed overhead, trembling through the rock.

The wind's whine had picked up to a higher, more frantic pitch. Grandmother raised a hand to remind her that Fec, Rakhan, and Sorya were sleeping so they could take a later watch. In a low voice, she said, "You may go on with the story, Tae Jin. Grandmother nodded with her usual calm, firelight flickering on her face so she seemed a spirit from the past fading into a measureless gloom. It seems we are being called to Ugin's grave to finish the story. That battle ended the Tarkir I knew. That battle set all the clans on a new path, a new beginning.

There was another dragon in the storm that day. This dragon vanished in a flash of golden light, like a second sun. It did not fly away. It was simply there, and then not there. A voice spoke to me, telling me I acted for the good of the clans. But I was merely a tool used by a power greater than myself. That dragon, called Bolas, killed Ugin. I saw the Spirit Dragon's body in the chasm. I heard his last breath, felt the cessation of his spirit. But the hedrons cast by a Planeswalker named Sarkhan Vol held a magic I did not understand then and am only coming to comprehend.

Some essence of Ugin still survives, however frail and faint it may be. It can be no coincidence that Ugin is struggling to reach us now. The visions are a warning. Tae Jin echoed, "Against what, Yasova Dragonclaw? The worst already happened when the dragonlords outlawed our clans and our khans and our knowledge of the ancestors.