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    The Stump and the Spire
    The Stump and the Spire
    The Stump and the Spire
    Ebook62 pages52 minutes

    The Stump and the Spire

    By Joseph R. Lallo

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    About this ebook

    The Stump and the Spire is a pair of short stories set in the Book of Deacon setting. Both stories in the collection were originally released in larger anthologies.

    The Stump and the Spire – Set long after the events of the Book of Deacon Trilogy, the titular story of the collection tells the tale of two children who find a mysterious book and wand buried on their farm. The artifacts seem to have a connection to the largely misunderstood history of their world, and may carry a threat for the future. This story was originally released in Neverland’s Library.

    Seeking the Shadow – A legendary assassin called the Red Shadow has plagued the Northern Alliance for decades. Desmeres Lumineblade has been after him for far too long to let him slip through his fingers this time. This story was originally released in Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues, a Stabby Award-winning short story collection.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJoseph R. Lallo
    Release dateMar 27, 2018
    ISBN9781370763603
    The Stump and the Spire
    Author

    Joseph R. Lallo

    Once a computer engineer, Joseph R. Lallo is now a full-time science fiction and fantasy author and contributor to the Six Figure Authors podcast.

    Read more from Joseph R. Lallo

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      Book preview

      The Stump and the Spire - Joseph R. Lallo

      The Stump and the Spire

      By Joseph R. Lallo

      Copyright © 2018 Joseph R. Lallo

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      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 person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      The Stump and the Spire

      Seeking the Shadow

      From the Author

      Introduction

      I have a strong tendency to write long. These days if I write anything short, it is for one of a handful of reasons. The primary one is a request from another author to produce a story for a short story collection. A secondary one is to fill out one of my own collections with something fresh so that it’s not just a raw rehash of my older works. In both cases, my conscience eventually starts harping on me. It has never been my intention to double dip my audience. I hate the idea of people having to buy some of my stories twice in order to get all of my stories, or otherwise force people to buy something they don’t want in order to get something that they do want. Thus, the advent of the newsletter perk.

      What you have here is a pair of my short stories in the Book of Deacon setting. Each was provided free of charge to my newsletter subscribers over the years, and there are many more to come. If you like these stories and you’d like more of them, consider signing up!

      Enjoy!

      The Stump and the Spire

      This story has the distinction of technically being my first traditionally published story. The organizers of The Neverland’s Library Anthology requested I write a short story on the theme of rediscovery. Like many of my stories, you really need to know the nature of the setting to know at what point in the timeline it takes place. If you’re curious, this takes place in what we call The Age of Ignorance era, which starts with Jade and ends with a book that I’ve written but not released yet.

      ###

      If you want to get to the root of something, you’re going to have to dig.

      It is a useful bit of wisdom in any walk of life. Time has a way of covering things up, after all. To get to the essential truth of a thing, the place where it all started, you will have to brush away the layers left behind by the passing years. The words may mean different things to different people, but the wisdom behind them remains. When a healer says you must dig to the root, for instance, he means you must find the cause of an ailment. When a diplomat says you must dig to the root, she means you must learn why a war began. The words could mean a dozen different things; it only depends on who is doing the speaking, and who is doing the listening.

      On this day it was William who was doing the listening. He was a young boy of ten who had grown up working the land with his parents and his sister. The one doing the speaking was William’s father, and he was not a diplomat or a healer. He was a farmer, and when a farmer says you must dig to the root, he is holding a shovel and pointing to a tree stump. Farmers don’t have time for metaphors.

      Father, I can’t dig out a whole tree by myself, William objected.

      I did it when I was your age. It just takes time, his father said, handing the boy the shovel and tousling his hair. It will do you good to get some proper work done, and this stump is long overdue to come out.

      William looked to the stump again. It was an ancient gray thing, the remains of an oak that had been dead the day they found it. The tree had been

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