Shadow to Shadow

By Scott Fitzgerald Gray

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

The village looked as ever it did, as if Conry might have already stood, might yet stand on this hill his whole life watching, seeing nothing change. Standing alone against time, everything within this single pane of vision cut from eternal cloth. Everything the same, the village, the fane always standing, never fading away.

People change, he thought. People die. Lady Jeslyn. Old Rhen.

Life was the first gift of the gods, his father said, and death the doorway through which the gods call all folk home. Death was the gods’ final gift, and the reckoning of all folk’s lives to be made in the gods’ names.

Conry believed it. All his life, he had believed it.

“Boy...”

He ran harder, the dead voice of Old Rhen calling him on.

• • •

Conry is thirteen and a priest’s son when the death of the matriarch Lady Jeslyn darkens his village like a summer dust storm. But when he discovers the connection between Lady Jeslyn’s death and the murder of Old Rhen, the druid whose passing now threatens drought, Conry finds himself facing a darkness beyond the reckoning of his faith — and a power that only he can destroy...

SHADOW TO SHADOW is a 10,000 word short story, and part of the collection THE VOICES OF THE DEAD -- DARK TALES & LOST SOULS -- AN ANTHOLOGY OF THE ENDLANDS

• Language: English
• Publisher: Insane Angel Studios
• Release date: Nov 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781927348024

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.

Book preview

A Tale of the Endlands

by

Scott Fitzgerald Gray

Published by Insane Angel Studios

insaneangel.com

Copyright © 2010 Scott Fitzgerald Gray

Smashwords Edition

A Tale of the Endlands

The village looked as ever it did, as if Conry might have already stood, might yet stand on this hill his whole life watching, seeing nothing change. Standing alone against time, everything within this single pane of vision cut from eternal cloth. Everything the same, the village, the fane always standing, never fading away.

People change, he thought. People die. Lady Jeslyn. Old Rhen.

Life was the first gift of the gods, his father said, and death the doorway through which the gods call all folk home. Death was the gods’ final gift, and the reckoning of all folk’s lives to be made in the gods’ names.

Conry believed it. All his life, he had believed it.

"Boy…"

He ran harder, the dead voice of Old Rhen calling him on.

Conry is thirteen and a priest’s son when the death of the matriarch Lady Jeslyn darkens his village like a summer dust storm. But when he discovers the connection between Lady Jeslyn’s death and the murder of Old Rhen, the druid whose passing now threatens drought, Conry finds himself facing a darkness beyond the reckoning of his faith — and a power that only he can destroy…

THE DISTANCE FROM THE RIVER to the fane was measured as nearly a thousand paces along the twisting line of the road, a little less than half that distance in a straight line through the hilly grasslands through which the rutted farm track swept. The sun was up, pale where it gilded the haze of green. Conry ran through summer grass, following the twisting trails already filling in where sheep had wandered the winter before.

It was early still, the short time that marked the change from night’s cool to warmth of day. Overhead was darkness. Behind him, the dawn. Conry had seen twelve summers pass, and he possessed in him the strength of leg that only the long summer gave as he raced past cottonwood grove and fieldstone fence, watching his shadow stretch before him as the sun rolled slowly upward against the level plane of sky behind.

Lady Jeslyn was gone to the gods, and feeling the shadow of that departure made him savor the new heat of morning, warming his arms and back through white homespun. Where rough stands of witchwillow grew tall, shadows swallowed each other and turned the ground to grey, breaking where Conry parted them with his passage and allowed the golden light to bleed through.

Lady Jeslyn was dead.

Where the scrubland broke to open range on one hand and