My new release form Cannon Publishing, A COLD AND MORTAL SPRING, first novel of The Wishkiller Saga, is already available in hardcover and paperback, but releases on Kindle in two days.

Please enjoy the excerpt below:

The keepwood was practically deserted. They met no one on the stairs climbing the height of the trunk. Aethal took a lantern from a wall sconce and pushed the door of Malcoor’s office open.

Shadows faded back to reveal a simple office, nothing more. Jeralta had been right. The room was nearly as big as the one above, if not so lavishly appointed. All was in order, down to the map cases hung from wall pegs and reams of files, neatly arranged in cubby holes. Half the cubbies were emptied. The files in the rest had a distinctly used look to them, as if they had been pushed back hastily. The bookshelves were full, but the writing desk was empty.

“Someone’s been in here, my Lord,” said Falk.

Aethal nodded. “Royal Auditors.” He crossed to a trunk the size of a wardrobe. In a space that could have held at least a dozen massive volumes. One remained, tunneled by bookworms. Aethal opened it to the back page. “This ledger is last dated thirty years ago. They’ll have everything else. Very thorough.” The sergeant shrugged. They headed up to their own room to continue their search.

“Well, they’ve really gone and done it,” Falk said. “Arrested the old bastard. And double-quick, too.”

“Why do you say that? Nothing here seems disarranged.”

Falk rapped a flat, single guffaw. “Malcoor always was a neat one,” he growled. “But they made him travel light.” Falk threw back the doors at the narrower end of the room. Orange and-blue uniforms swayed gently in the walk-in closets, plus a few neat civilian outfits, gathering dust. Shoes and boots gleamed. “This is almost Malcoor’s full kit. They marched him out of here with maybe one or two changes of clothes; one dress uniform if I’m any judge.”

Aethal cast about the room, looking for anything more. “It all fits, certainly. They wouldn’t have moved him off in style if they suspected him of theft.” Aethal gazed at the bookshelves, stopped. There, all together, sat three books with no titles on their spines. Two were thick and squat, but the third was nearly as broad as the ledger in the trunk, despite being not a quarter so thick, and stuffed with loose parchments. Aethal took them down. 

The first book was also a ledger, and at first Aethal thought he’d found some sort of evidence that the Auditors had missed, but if so, Malcoor’s theft was both enormous and arcane. It resembled a bill of lading more than a ledger, though for what Aethal could not have said. An expedition, perhaps; the paper was yellow with age. It told him nothing.

The second book was more interesting, though the same age. It was a journal, but the script was so small it would be a challenge to read. He’d been about to put it back when the opening line caught his eye: “Passed the Wrackberg to the salute of Cannon – and may the little Bastard explode his own Self! Clear sailing!” Whom does that refer to? It’s not a documentary of thirty years watching the Pass, then. Aethal pocketed it. He opened the third book to the middle.

Color leaped from every page. Aethal felt himself draw in a breath. In the dim light, blue and white chalks nearly glowed. Aethal flipped back one of the flimsy parchments that protected the page and looked down on a scene drawn by a madman.

It was a coastline, impossibly small, dominated by a green mountain impossibly huge, cast into shadow by the moons, showing low against the horizon. He turned the page. This one was painted: a ship, silhouetted against a burning mountain with red rivulets of fire running down its sides. Above the ship were stars picked out in a sort of quicksilver paint, Aethal guessed. He recognized the constellations.

“Who ever knew the old man was an artist?” asked Aethal, full of wonder. Malcoor had always been the General for him, set in the Pass specifically to drum lessons into young lieutenant heads. Experienced, wise, and even clever in his lessons, he had never been warm and always a little sour. None of this fit Aethal’s picture of him. He turned the page again, and his knees gave way.

It was the first coastline, this time in broad day. The green mountain dominated the coast. And there were low shapes of trees covering the land as far as the artist could have drawn. Not so tall as keepwoods but low and at least as broad. The dark green leaves spread, casting blue chalk-shadows over golden sands. Beneath them there were gleams of silver. Nightmare vision, of Lotus triumphant.

Aethal could hear his own breathing, loud in his ears. Falk’s face was white, his lips moving soundlessly. He knew what he was looking at now. The Empire, lost to the Lotus forever. And who knew that Malcoor had ever been in the Fleet? No, but he had used to tell stories, hadn’t he, on the rare days of rest? Of the days when his father had been in the Fleet. Was this his father’s work, kept out of sentiment? Aethal recognized the handwriting, though. Had seen it often enough in his time here.

“But that would mean breaking Maednac’s Ban; would mean going west of the Prime…” Aethal felt cold. Maednac had long ago decreed on pain of death that none should ever again sail within sight of the lost Empire. The order had never been revoked. 

If Malcoor had done that, he would be guilty of deeper treason than Verlaen had ever known. So they discovered it and arrested him? After thirty years? Oh, and then left the evidence here? For a wild moment, Aethal wondered if he might be seeing a confession, of a sort, by the man who had brought the Lotus, but he dismissed the idea instantly. In thirty years, the Lotus would have covered Verlaen mile by mile, five or ten times over. Malcoor cannot be the culprit. I must be the only one who knows of these records besides him. 

Impossible: Only Aethal, Jeharok and Farnan knew of his mission to Maednac Serpiin. Yet his father had sent Jeralta to meet him. Perhaps his father had discovered Malcoor’s crime as well, was even now putting Malcoor’s head beneath a greatsword for treason… and thus robbing Verlaen of one of the few living men to ever have seen Lotus. 

Aethal forced himself to calm down. It didn’t make sense, but could it really be coincidence? Does my father know? Does the King know already? Why did that frighten him? It would be a great relief; it meant that they would be putting protective measures in place, tightening the Discipline. Or it meant that Lotus might already be rampant in Maednac Serpiin.  

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