Mallara and Burn: On the Road

Kindle owners, take heart!    All four tales of Sorceress Mallara    and Burn the Shimmer    are now available from Amazon    for the Kindle e-book reader!    Get 'On the Road' for 99 cents    from Amazon, for the Kindle!     Want On the Road, but don't have a Kindle?      Go here to pick up a printed copy    direct from Sizzling Lizard Press.    Cover art for On the Road    courtesy of Beth Morgan

An excerpt from "Mallara and Burn: On the Road"

"Looks like the storm is over," said Burn, who hovered in the shelter of a grinning Ollow's Eve pumpkin. When he spoke, his voice set the candle within the pumpkin to flickering, and Mallara's frown deepened at the thought of Burn as the spirit of Ollow's Eve.

"Any villagers still lurking about?" asked Mallara.

"Not a one," said Burn. "Thank the rain."

Mallara sighed and stood. "Good," she muttered. "I'm not in the mood for an audience." As if there will be anything to see here tonight, she thought. Dancing bones on Ollow's Eve. Bah. There's nothing here but a prehistoric ring of badly-carved stones and a weary Sorceress with a blister on her heel.

About her, rain-water still dripped and splashed from the circle of twelve tall stones the Tothish villagers called the Ringed Round. Probably half of the traditional Ollow's Eve twelve dozen carved pumpkins scattered about the Round were still lit, their candles having braved the storm; Mallara was thus surrounded by glowing orange eyes and wide, toothy grins, each pumpkin face lit by red-orange flickers and each casting small quick flocks of shadows.

Mallara looked away from the leaning old stones and the leering pumpkin-faces, threw back her wet hood, and sought out instead the moon or the stars. The sky above was inky black, though -- the rain might be gone, but the clouds hung low and thick.

"We won't be checking the alignment of Stone Seven against the north star tonight," she said.

"Pity," said Burn, still in his mad-eyed pumpkin. "Still, perhaps we can make it back to Toth before the Ollow's Eve party breaks up," he said. "You think?"

Mallara shrugged. Now that the wind had died, she could hear faint tootles and pipes of music from the village below; music, and snatches of laughter and singing.

"That isn't the dance I came to see," she said. She whispered a word, and caught her staff as it fell from a hole in the air. "And this night is far from done."

Burn flew out of his pumpkin's grin. "Mistress," he said, darting to hang over Mallara's right shoulder. "How many times did you say Master Wesseven held vigil in this very spot?"

Mallara walked to the center of the Round and planted her staff upright in the thick red mud.

"I didn't," she said.

"Eight times," said Burn. "Eight Ollow's Eves he spent on this very spot. Eight nights of watching and waiting. And what did he see?"

Mallara said a Word, and a handful of light sprang to life at the top of her staff, rose, and halted when Mallara snapped her fingers.

The light lit the Round. Not noonday-bright, but bright enough that Mallara could see her own shadow, and Burn's faint blur in the air.

"Master Wesseven saw nothing," said Burn, in reply to his own question. "He tried every spell, every trick, every conjuration he knew, and aside from the time the goat wandered up behind him and ate his hat the great and terrible Master Wesseven saw not a single dancing leg-bone."

Mallara spoke another Word. A writhing tangle of lights, like firefly glows stretched into strings and hung in a whipping wind, flared in her hands. She tossed the glows into the damp air, and they spread out, darting to and fro among the stones.

"I'm talking to myself again, aren't I?" asked Burn.

Mallara spoke again, and caught her glass wand as it appeared before her.

"Fine," said Burn. "Mope all you want. Mope through a jolly all-night back-country Ollow's Eve party. Mope when your faithful assistant tries to cheer you up. Mope all night, for all I care. Just don't mope when Old Bones doesn't show up, because we both know you aren't really here to investigate legends of dancing bones and ghostly pipers. You're here to stand in the mud on a rainy Ollow's Eve and mope."

"Burn."

Burn buzzed away from Mallara's shoulder. "The Sorceress speaks," he said. "What an honor. Pity, though. I've got work to do. No time for idle pleasantries. Might be any number of dire magical threats lurking among these freshly-carved yet sinister vegetables."

And he was gone, buzzing like a hornet.

Mallara sighed. Her wand grew warm in her hand, and she idly soothed it with a whispered Word and a gentle squeeze.

A damp wind rose up, stirred the pumpkin-candles, and quickly died. Mallara's tangle-spells returned as the wind failed, and the spells whispered briefly of wet stones and shadows and Burn's angry buzz.

But nothing else. No hint of ancient magic, no taint of hidden haunts. Just rain and stones and grinning candle-lit pumpkins.

And a lone moping Sorceress, thought Mallara. He's right, she realized. I am moping.

It's all this Ollow's Eve business, she decided. Pumpkins and parties and gifts in the night. Oh, I know that there is no Winter King, no thinning of the veil between this world and another, no moonlit tide of magic sweeping through the night. I'm all grown up now, and I know all this, and all too well.

Mallara sighed and shifted her feet and nearly lost a boot to the mud. As she struggled to free it, the music on the wind waxed louder, and Mallara recognized the tune as "Hail, Hail the Winter King." The words sprang unbidden to Mallara's mind, and she shook her head and wrenched her boot from the mud. As a child, I sang myself to sleep with that very song, many an Ollow's Eve. How ironic, she thought – my childish love for the kindly Winter King led me to the study of magic, and he was the first to fall to my newfound knowledge.

Pumpkins are just pumpkins, and better used for pies.

"Burn," she said, after sending the tangle-spells back among the Round. "I'm sorry."

Burn made no reply. Mallara sighed, spoke to her wand, and filled the stone circle with a soft golden glow.

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