A Little Hospitality

By Kevin L. O'Brien

It is only Differel's fourth visit to the Land of the Dreams of Men, since she acquired the ability to travel there on her own, and she is still something of a novice. However, thanks to the mentoring of Team Girl and her husband, Victor Plunkett, Marquis of Elissa, as well as her Waking World monster hunting training, she is better equipped to handle the dangers of the Dreamlands than most newcomers.

When she reaches Celephais, she discovers that Victor had been sent on an important diplomatic mission and will not return for some time. To keep herself busy until then, she decides to take a walking tour of the Naraxa River Valley. Kuranes, King of Ooth-Nargai, asks her if she will deliver important dispatches to the outposts and communities that dot the valley, and she agrees. She is now coming to the end of the her journey and she has one stop left, but to reach it she must cross a range of mountains, and she cannot do it before nightfall. As she looks for a place to spend the night, she stumbles upon the camp of a fellow adventurer, a person of short stature who extends an invitation of hospitality to share his fire for the night.

Michael turns out to be a witty and mischievous rogue who puts her immediately at ease, but she eventually learns that he isn't what he appears to be.

In the Bonus Story, the Princess in Orange is concerned that people mistake Sir Differel for a guy, and she takes steps to correct that.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin L. O'Brien
• Release date: Mar 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311145604

Kevin L. O'Brien

Kevin L. O'Brien was born with a pen in his hand.Well, not quite, but he has been writing for as long as he can remember, at least since First Grade. Writing has always been his first, true love, but it hasn't always been his career. He worked for 15 years as a biomedical researcher, then for 3 years as a web designer. However, after 30 years of trying to be published in print with little success, he has decided to try his hand at self-publishing.He writes primarily speculative fiction -- fantasy, science fiction, horror, and their sub-genres -- but he also likes to try his hand at thrillers, suspense, mystery, and even westerns. However, his stories tend to have a fantasy element, no matter how subtle.Most of his stories involve the following three main characters:Medb hErenn (http://www.medbherenn.com/) -- One-time queen of Ireland, she is over 3500 years old. A warrior and a sorceress, she cannot be harmed by any weapon made by the hand of man.Eile and Sunny, Team Girl (http://www.teamgirlforever.com/) -- They are two adorable, vivacious, fun-loving young women whose motto is ONWARD TO ADVENTURE!!! Yet trouble follows them like a love-sick puppy wherever they go.Sir Differel Van Helsing (http://www.sir-differel.com/) -- The descendent of Abraham Van Helsing and King Arthur, she heads the Caerleon Order, the premier monster-hunting organization of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. She commands Dracula, the most powerful vampire extant, and the greatsword Caliburn, better known as Excalibur.He also writes a series of sword & sorcery stories set in an alternative universe known as the Lands of the Dreams of Men.Kevin lives in Denver with his family and 4 cats.For more information, see his website: http://www.kevinlobrien.com/

Book preview

A Little Hospitality

Kevin L. O'Brien

Smashwords Edition

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Text Copyright 2013 by Kevin L. O'Brien

Cover design and typography copyright 2013 by Kevin L. O'Brien

Adventure font distributed under a free use license by Neale Davidson and Pixel Sagas

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License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. It is licensed for your personal enjoyment and remains the copyrighted property of the author. This ebook may not be sold, reproduced, or copied, whether for commercial or non-commercial purposes, but it may be given away if no changes are made. If you enjoyed this book and would like to share it, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from Smashwords or their favorite online retailer, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support, and for respecting the hard work of this author.

Please consider writing a review for this book on the retailer's website.

If you see any misspellings or typographical errors, please notify Kevin L. O'Brien using one of his online social networks. Thank you.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents, including those based on the real world, are either products of the imagination of Kevin L. O'Brien or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Because some ebook platforms do not support special characters, certain words may appear misspelled, but this was done deliberately to avoid the problem of the platforms deleting the characters. Also, the LRF platform used by older models of the Sony Reader does not permit the use of links to external URLs, whereas the PDB platform used by Palm reading devices does not support any form of linking whatsoever. Finally, certain words use British instead of American spelling, to simulate the characters' English accents.

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Table of Contents

Preface

A Little Hospitality

Bonus Story: Genderbent

About the Author

Other Books by Kevin L. O'Brien

Connect with Kevin L. O'Brien

Sample Excerpts

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Preface

In addition to her adventures as Director of the Caerleon Order, each night Sir Differel Van Helsing sojourns to the Land of the Dreams of Men. She first discovered the Dreamlands when she crossed over physically through a transient gate. Eile and Sunny of Team Girl found her and protected her until they could get her back to the Waking World. Later she returned in the normal fashion to stop a Fomorian plot to rule the Waking World through people's dreams. During that second trip she met her former husband, Victor Plunkett, who in life had been a Dreamer and who retired to the Dreamlands after he had been killed. They remarried, and after she returned to the Waking World Medb hErenn gave her a magical device that would allow her to re-enter the Dreamlands whenever she liked. After a few nights she no longer needed it, and she has been making her daily sojourn ever since.

She was effectively a novice for her first couple of weeks, and Team Girl mentored her (with Victor's help) just as Medb had mentored them when they first arrived. However, unlike most new Dreamers, she was better equipped to handle dangerous situations, and early on she took trips on her own to more quickly familiarize herself with the lay of the Land. This story describes one of those solo adventures. It is also the beginning of a series of related stories, and it introduces a character who will appear in later stories.

The Bonus Story, Genderbent, marks the second return of the Princess in Orange. It is a humorous vignette that shows both the extent to which she treats Differel like a plaything, and the degree to which she will try to humiliate her.

Back to TOC

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Differel Van Helsing paused at a bend in the corniche road and looked west out over the valley behind her. The sun would set behind the mountains in another hour, making it too dark to travel, even considering the well-marked trail, though night would not fall for another hour after that. She had to find a place to camp, as unwelcome as that prospect felt. Hitching the pack higher up her shoulders, she pressed on.

It was her fourth night in the Dreamlands. It had taken her a week to travel from the town of Ulthar to her mansion in the city-state of Celephais. Once she had had a chance to clean up, change clothes, and have a bite to eat, she contacted the embassy for the island nation of Punica to inquire as to the whereabouts of her husband. Victor Edward Plunkett served as plenipotentiary ambassador to the Kingdom of Ooth-Nargai, of which Celephais was the capital, but he spent about half of his time on his estate in the Mark of Elissa, a group of a dozen islands over which he held seisin as a marquess. Unfortunately, he was absent from both places; Elishat, the Queen of the city-state of Karchedon which ruled Punica, had sent him on a secret diplomatic mission and he wasn't expected to return for a fortnight, ten days at the earliest.

The road made a sharp turn into a tributary valley and terminated at the foot of a path that ran up the steep slope alongside a cascading stream. Looking ahead, she saw it led to a ridgeway high above. Though the path looked rugged, she figured the track on the ridgeline would be fairly straight and level. She paused again, but to look straight up. She could just barely make out a tiny dot in the cloudless azure sky. It was her faithful Wakiya, Eleanor d'Aquitaine. She smiled; Eleanor had become bound to her by an empathic link and followed her everywhere, soaring on thermals and currents in lazy, miles-wide circles, but never more than five minutes away in a dive. Looking down, she eyed the path, sighed, and planted her makila to steady herself as she started up.

She had spent her first full day in Celephais dealing with the concerns of her knighthood, her rank of lord marshal, and her position as heir presumptive to the throne of Ooth-Nargai, and the second occupied with the maintenance and financial matters of her mansion. Come the third, however, she had nothing to do and considered taking a walking tour. Fortunately, Kuranes, the king of Ooth-Nargai, needed to have some important decrees and missives delivered to various places along the Naraxa River, and she agreed to accept the commission as a good excuse to explore the vale. As such, the following day she set out north for the mining town of Carsoon nestled against the southwestern tip of the Tanarian Hills, and then followed the southern edge of the mountains to the east, stopping at villages and homesteads along the way. A week later she had just one destination left, a Cistercian monastery located on the opposite side of a spur of mountains that extended east from the main mass of the Hills. Kuranes suggested that, rather than waste time going all the way around the range as most travelers did, she take a little used road that cut across the spur and came out above the monastery.

As she struggled up the precipitous slope, she reflected on how the old king had conned her good. On a map the way looked fairly straight, but in reality it started off as a road with a series of hairpin turns that snaked up the escarpment before turning into the corniche road that wound its way around peaks and followed the line of serpentine ridges. She had hoped to reach the monastery before dusk, but she calculated she probably had traveled twice the straight-line distance, and she doubted she had even reached the halfway point.

After a quarter of an hour she spotted the beginning of the ridge line. For the last third of the path, the stream fell as a waterfall from an outcrop of weathered rock before hitting the slope of the valley further down. When she reached the ridge, she saw that the stream flowed out of an adjacent mountain before being diverted by the ridgeline. Looking back, she watched as the water first spilled into a plunge pool in a smooth, flat shelf before running off the edge on the far side. She realized that must have been the rock outcrop she had spotted from below. A copse of firs, pines, ashes, and cottonwoods, with numerous deadfall logs and broken boughs, surrounded two-thirds of the circumference of the pool.

That looks like a fine spot for an encampment, she thought. It lay sheltered from the weather, there was plenty of fresh water and firewood, and