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    A Space Between
    A Space Between
    A Space Between
    Ebook45 pages39 minutes

    A Space Between

    By Scott Fitzgerald Gray

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    About this ebook

    AN EBOOK-SINGLE SHORT STORY — A TALE OF THE ENDLANDS

    An excerpt from the fantasy anthology "A Prayer for Dead Kings and Other Tales", "A Space Between" is a dark story of passion and murder (unintended and otherwise). Charan and Jalina, sibling heirs to the throne of empire, share a bond of blood and a dark secret — both of which threaten to destroy them when their father is killed...

    EXCERPT

    Steel flashed as she spun away from him, his own knife in his hand somehow. They locked guards at the first strike, then Jalina was fading back, footsteps splashing clumsily as her blade slashed past Charan’s neck. He slid to let it miss him, parried the next blow, returned with one of his own that she caught and twisted past, behind him suddenly.

    Where Jalina crouched, her eyes were bright with the fear he recognized.

    “I knew it would end this way,” she whispered.

    Charan’s hand was shaking, the battered blade of his knife weaving points of bright fire in the half-light. He tried to trace back the two dozen heartbeats just past, but his sight, his mind and memory were the same blur of red.

    He had drawn on her, he thought. But he wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have. The evenlamp was in the water behind him. He had dropped it in expectation, needing to free his other hand for balance. Impossible. He shook his head, saw his sister flinch in expectation of another strike.

    The feeling he had ever been afraid to name rooted deep in his chest. He felt the scent and the sight of her overwhelm his memory.

    He felt the pain that her words made, felt the fear in her that was the knowledge that her brother had tried to kill her rather than lose her. The knowledge that he would try again. He felt the weight of the knife in his hand...

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    Scott Fitzgerald Gray is a specially constructed biogenetic simulacrum built around an array of experimental consciousness-sharing techniques — a product of the finest minds of Canadian science until the grant money ran out. Accidentally set loose during an unauthorized midnight rave at the lab, the S.F. Gray entity is currently at large amongst an unsuspecting populace, where his work as an author, screenwriter, editor, RPG designer, and story editor for feature film keeps him off the streets.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInsane Angel Studios
    Release dateMay 18, 2011
    ISBN9780986828867
    A Space Between
    Author

    Scott Fitzgerald Gray

    Scott Fitzgerald Gray (9th-level layabout, vindictive good) is a writer of fantasy and speculative fiction, a fiction editor, a story editor, and an editor and designer of roleplaying games — all of which means he finally has the job he really wanted when he was sixteen. He shares his life in the Western Canadian hinterland with a schoolteacher, two itinerant daughters, and a number of animal companions. More info on him and his work (some of it even occasionally truthful) can be found by reading between the lines at insaneangel.com.

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    • 3/5
      Beautifully written. A love-hate relationship between brother and sister, spanning incest and murder. Too dark and twisty for my taste.

    Book preview

    A Space Between - Scott Fitzgerald Gray

    Table of Contents

    A Space Between

    A Prayer for Dead Kings

    Copyright

    A Tale of the Endlands

    From the Anthology

    A Prayer for Dead Kings

    and Other Tales

    by

    Scott Fitzgerald Gray

    Published by Insane Angel Studios

    insaneangel.com

    Email insaneangel@insaneangel.com

    Twitter @scottfgray

    Google+ Scott Fitzgerald Gray

    Facebook sfgray

    Copyright © 2011 Scott Fitzgerald Gray

    Smashwords Edition

    THEY WERE FOUND in the midst of their tryst by the Khanan Irnash’an himself, the steel-bound door of the abandoned White Tower gallery breaking beneath his shoulder like it might have been a courtesan’s cork-paneled closet. The voice of the High Emperor of all Ajaeltha when he saw them was a scream of purest rage. He had the scepter of his reign in hand, hefted like a mace with all the strength and fury that had conquered the uprisings of three governors before the two of them were even born.

    Jalina screamed, clutching the sweat-stained satin sheet to her as she scrambled back on the cushioned pallet, eyes downcast from instinctive deference as much as fear. Charan met the aging sovereign’s gaze as the scepter swung high. He hit the floor rolling, naked flesh slamming against cold stone as the mass of gilt-edged steel and razor-sharp gems hissed past his head, a finger’s breadth from killing him.

    Across the ancient line of statues set in an uneven colonnade to both sides of the door, his clothing had been scattered as an unseemly web. Cloak and leggings, shirt and linens. The stone faces were ancient courtiers and forgotten sovereigns, all of them staring blankly. Banished here to dust and silence, far from the white marble of the khanan’s great halls.

    Jalina would be safe enough, Charan knew as he scrambled to his feet, feeling the ancient warrior twisting behind him but not daring to look. He understood that the second blow would come for him, just as he knew that it would hit with certainty, no room to maneuver in the narrow confines of the cluttered chamber. Snatching at his leggings and belt, Charan grabbed up his knife, the scabbard left exposed as it always was. Force of habit. He spun as he hurled it with no thought, felt the momentum of his movement twist through his arm like the crack of a teamster’s whip.

    He was planning only to distract the khanan, hoping to divert that follow-up killing stroke to his shoulder or side rather than his skull. What he might do to prevent the next blow was a matter he was still frantically thinking on when the scepter lurched from callused hands.

    The khanan clutched at the knife where a hand’s-length of damask steel had buried itself hilt-deep in his chest. He hit the floor with a soft thud and the gasp of his last breath. All was silent after that.

    Neither of them spoke for a long while. Charan fought to slow his breathing, realized numbly that the continued quiet meant the khanan had made his careful way up the tower stairs alone. He slipped to the buckled door, closed it

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