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    Lands of No Return
    Lands of No Return
    Lands of No Return
    Ebook75 pages1 hour

    Lands of No Return

    By J.C. Merrill

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    Alma of Masozi, once God-Queen Almakai of Maseko, has finally rediscovered what it means to be mortal. She lives in the Kao-Riyah Delta, half a continent away from the land she once ruled. Stripped of her power, she has found peace in the minor magic of a simple river-guide. She has buried hard truths to stay where she is, but when her old enemies come searching for a vanished expedition, she's forced to guide them into the heart of the Kao-Riyah. Alongside a river-spirit and the man they both love, Alma makes a desperate plan to lead the searchers astray. The cost of failure could be more than her new life is worth: the lost expedition was searching for something that should have remained buried, older and colder than tyrants and gods. When this much power is at stake, long experience has taught Alma that any deception is on the table and no cost is too high. But this mission will test her soul in ways that even a fallen goddess could never have anticipated.

    'Lands of No Return' is a novella, volume four of the Songs of Esoka, a series of fantasy with African roots.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJ.C. Merrill
    Release dateAug 1, 2015
    ISBN9781310902550
    Lands of No Return
    Author

    J.C. Merrill

    J.C. Merrill is the author of the Songs of Esoka, a series of fantasy novelettes and novellas set in a world with African roots.J.C. Merrill is a pen name for Jonathan Olfert, whose short fiction and non-fiction have been published in various markets and under various names. He has an M.A. in political science, an enduring fascination with Africa, and possibly too much interest in necromancy.

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      Book preview

      Lands of No Return - J.C. Merrill

      Lands of No Return

      Book Four of the Songs of Esoka

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2015 J.C. Merrill

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Lands of No Return

      More Books by J.C. Merrill

      Connect With Me

      Introduction

      Lands of No Return is the fourth part of the Songs of Esoka.

      In Bone Dancer's War, the Tantaran necromancer Deadleg Tom launched a one-man campaign to undermine the immortal God-Queen Almakai of Maseko. He broke her people's faith in her, and killed or scattered all her consorts but one: Elosha, Alma's spiritualist. In order to oppose Tom, Elosha turned his talents to necromancy, and he and Alma left Tom for dead. But the damage was done: critically weakened, Maseko was occupied by the High King of Tantara, Petros Alkeri, Alma's oldest enemy. And Alma was no longer a magician or a god.

      In Gate of Thorns, Alma and Elosha made their way through Tantaran-occupied territory, hunted by the High King's agents. Alma was captured and killed, but Elosha used his growing necromantic strength to bind Alma's soul to her killer's body. In the battle that followed, Elosha's power became frightening in its intensity. When he refused to turn away from necromancy, even after reaching safety, Alma left him at the city of Marun Sal Sesh.

      In Never Reach the Sea, Alma journeyed to the Kao-Riyah Delta, homeland of an extinct people that predated humanity. She sought out the buried temple where, three hundred years before, she had made herself a god by stealing an Old One's dreams. But Deadleg Tom had survived. He had learned of the temple in Maseko's captured archives, and a Tantaran expedition raced Alma and her river-guide, the enigmatic Ingedi of Masozi. Alma ventured into the temple as its guardians fought the Tantarans, and when Ingedi was wounded, Alma faced Deadleg Tom alone. She managed to gain the upper hand, and spared his life, but delivered him to the Old One's dubious mercies. Abandoning her search for godhood, she became Ingedi's student, learning the ways of the Kao-Riyah river-guides and rediscovering what it meant to be mortal.

      But she always knew there would be a reckoning.

      Lands of No Return

      Alma sat in the shade of an embroidered canopy, draped down from the side of a boat, and tried to feel at ease. The boat was of Tantaran make, carefully portaged around the Kendulah Gates, and bigger than any vessel in the Kao-Riyah Delta. The porters had been unloading it all afternoon, leaving Alma to the conversational mercy of their Tantaran employer.

      A long trek downriver had stolen his youth before she met him in Masozi. Now, after two weeks in the Kao-Riyah Delta, he had the hollow eyes of a foreigner who'd seen an inkanyamba up close. He trimmed his beard and his coat's stray threads with little scissors, as if polite society two continents away might ask him over for dinner. He had the honey skin of a Sesshai or an Angharabadi, but he dressed and talked like the olive-skinned Tantarans, and he worked for them too. So Tantaran he was.

      And, thus, the enemy.

      She'd done her share of scholarship in her day, but this man fetishized research. He had trunks of books and unspecified research aids, things she barely recognize, and other trunks he kept locked. Sipping honeyflower cordial in the canopy's shade — it was just the two of them under there — he instructed the local porters in the proper transportation and manipulation of boxes. They'd pulled up to shore by a cave mouth on a damp green hill, and the porters were in no hurry to get near that cave.

      Then again, neither was Alma.

      I'm sorry, he said, turning back to her. You were saying?

      My Path is easier than most, she said, letting him understand that he was dragging every word out of her. Her quill paused on the half-finished map pinned to her lap desk. If I think about going in a general direction, or to a specific place, I start to get a gut instinct for the best route.

      Best according to whom? said the Tantaran.

      A shrug. The spirits of the delta.

      The gods here? He held up his cordial to the light and examined it with a critical eye. How he'd managed to bring intact glassware down the river, around the Kendulah Gates, and into the heart of the Kao-Riyah, she'd never know.

      The word's not precise, Alma said.

      You speak Tantal well enough to find a precise one. Explain it to me. His friendliness rarely took no for an answer, even if he tended not to impose on the important things. After two weeks in the same longboat, his manner grated on Alma, but it rarely bored her. As the porters unloaded strange cargo around the mouth of the cave, she hunched over her map.

      It was good enough to get you here, she said, as evenly as she could manage. She tapped the parchment with one fingernail, but carefully, nowhere near the still-damp lines. And good enough to get the route mapped. Why question it?

      Sort of a puerile way to look at magic, even if it's a minor Path like yours.

      She offered him a patently fake smile. You're Tantaran, yes?

      I'm from a town outside Marun Sal Sesh, on the road to Maseko. I'm Esokan.

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